Hasina’s son wants role for her party in reforms, election

NEW DELHI: The son of Bangladesh’s ousted prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, said he was happy with the army chief’s timeline for elections within 18 months, though it was later than expected, but warned that genuine reform and polls were impossible without her party.

General Waker-uz-Zaman, whose refusal to stand by Hasina in the face of deadly student protests prompted her flight to India in August, has told Reuters that democracy should return within a year to a year-and-a-half.

“I’m happy to hear we have an expected timeline at least now,” Hasina’s son and adviser, Sajeeb Wazed, told Reuters late on Tuesday.

“But we have seen this play out before where an unconstitutional, unelected government promises reform and then things only get worse.” With the police left in disarray after Hasina fled, the powerful army took a key role in subsequent events, with Zaman saying he meets the head of the interim government each week as the military backs its stability efforts.

The two main political parties, Hasina’s Awami League and its bitter rival, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), have both called for elections to be held within three months of the interim government taking office in August. The south Asian nation’s unelected interim government led by Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus has promised reforms in the judiciary, police and financial institutions before elections, but has not set a date for the exercise.