Protest leaders in Bangladesh said they expected members of an interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus to be finalized on Wednesday after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled to India following the violent crackdown on a student-led rebellion.
Bangladesh's president appointed Yunus, who was really useful by student leaders, as head of the interim government late Tuesday and said the remaining members have to be finalized soon to beat the present crisis and pave the best way for elections.
The interim government is meant to fill an influence vacuum that emerged after Bangladesh's army chief Hasina announced her resignation in a televised address on Monday. The country had previously been rocked by weeks of deadly violence wherein around 300 people were killed and hundreds injured.
“It is crucial that trust in the government is quickly restored,” Yunus, 84, told the Financial Times on Wednesday, adding that he doesn’t seek any elected position or office after the transition period.
His spokesman said he was expected to return to Dhaka on Thursday after undergoing medical procedures in Paris.
“We need calm, we need a roadmap for new elections and we need to get to work preparing a new leadership,” Yunus told the newspaper.
“In the coming days, I will be speaking to all relevant parties about how we can work together to rebuild Bangladesh and how they can help.”
Hasina's resignation sparked jubilation across the country, and after she fled, crowds stormed her office unhindered, ending her second 15-year term in power within the country of 170 million people, which has suffered economic hardship in recent times.
Normality was slowly returning after Monday's chaos, but recent protests broke out in a Dhaka district on Wednesday as a whole bunch of central bank officials forced 4 of their deputy governors to resign over alleged corruption, Bangladesh Bank sources said.
The bank initially didn’t comment.
Hundreds of individuals gathered at a rally of the important opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party in Dhaka, whose leader Khaleda Zia was released from house arrest by the president on Tuesday.
Return to normality
Giant neighbor India, which has close cultural and economic ties with Bangladesh, has evacuated all non-essential staff and their families from its embassy and 4 consulates within the country, two Indian government sources said.
Most schools and universities in Dhaka and other cities that were closed in mid-July due to protests have reopened. People took buses and other technique of transport to offices and banks. The country's important textile factories, which were closed for days, reopened on Wednesday.
The movement that brought down Hasina grew out of demonstrations against public sector job quotas for the families of veterans of Pakistan's 1971 War of Independence. Critics saw this as a method of reserving jobs for allies of the ruling party.
President Mohammed Shahabuddin has also really useful nominating a war veteran for the transitional government.
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry made its first statement for the reason that protests began on Wednesday, saying: “The government and people of Pakistan stand in solidarity with the people of Bangladesh and sincerely hope for a peaceful and speedy return to normality.”
Nahid Islam, one among the important leaders of the scholar movement, told reporters after the president's announcement that the scholars had really useful 10 to fifteen members for the transitional government in an initial list that they had presented to the president.
Islam said he expected the members of the interim government to be decided inside 24 hours of Tuesday evening. The students' recommendations for the federal government would come from members of civil society and in addition student representatives, Islam said.
Hasina landed in New Delhi on Monday and resides in a protected house on the outskirts of the capital. Indian media reports say she plans to travel on to Britain, however the British Home Office has not commented.
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