Sheikh Hasina is the daughter of the nation’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
Dhaka:
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as soon as joined rivals in a struggle to revive democracy however her lengthy reign in energy has been marked by arrests of opposition leaders, crackdowns on free speech and suppression of dissent.
Ms Hasina, 76, gained a fourth straight time period and fifth total in energy by sweeping Sunday’s normal election, which was boycotted by the principle opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Get together (BNP) for the second time within the final three polls.
The daughter of the nation’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, Hasina was lucky to have been visiting Europe when most of her household have been assassinated in a navy coup in 1975.
Born in 1947, in southwestern Bangladesh, then East Pakistan, Hasina was the eldest of 5 youngsters. Hasina did her commencement in Bengali Literature from Dhaka College in 1973 and gained political expertise as a go-between for her father and his pupil followers.
She returned to Bangladesh from India, the place she lived in exile, in 1981 and later joined fingers with political foe Khaleda Zia, chief of the Bangladesh Nationalist Get together (BNP), to guide a well-liked rebellion for democracy that toppled navy ruler Hossain Mohammad Ershad from energy in 1990.
However the alliance with Zia didn’t final lengthy and the bitter and deep-rooted rivalry between the 2 ladies, usually referred to as the ‘battling begums’, went on to dominate Bangladeshi politics for many years.
Hasina first led the Awami League occasion to victory in 1996, serving a one five-year time period earlier than regaining energy in 2009, by no means to lose once more.
As time went on, she turned more and more autocratic and her rule has been marked by mass arrests of political opponents and activists, pressured disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
Rights teams have warned of a digital one-party rule by Hasina’s Awami League.
Zia, herself a former prime minister, was jailed in 2018 on graft prices which the opposition says have been trumped up. The ailing former premier was allowed to remain at dwelling in Dhaka below a particular provision because the COVID-19 pandemic however was barred from political exercise.
Khaleda’s son, Tarique Rahman, is the appearing chairman of the BNP occasion, however he’s in exile after a number of prices have been introduced in opposition to him. He has denied all of them. The occasion’s subsequent most senior chief, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, and a number of other others have been in jail since a lethal protest on the finish of October.
BNP and rights teams say Hasina’s authorities arrested 10,000 opposition occasion employees on trumped up prices within the leadup to Sunday’s normal election.
Hasina refused BNP calls for to resign and permit a impartial authority to run the election, accusing the opposition of instigating anti-government protests which have rocked Dhaka since late October and killed at the least 14 folks.
Each Hasina and her rivals have accused their opponents of attempting to create chaos and violence to thwart political peace and jeopardize the democracy that has but to take agency root within the South Asian nation of 170 million folks.
Hasina mentioned she didn’t must show the credibility of the election to anybody. “What’s essential is that if the folks of Bangladesh will settle for this election.”
Critics say her final 15 years in energy have been marked by authoritarian rule, however Hasina additionally has been credited with turning across the economic system and the huge clothes trade, whereas profitable worldwide reward for sheltering Rohingya Muslims fleeing persecution in neighbouring Myanmar.
However the economic system has additionally slowed sharply because the Russia-Ukraine struggle pushed up costs of gas and meals imports, forcing Bangladesh to show final yr to the Worldwide Financial Fund for a $4.7 billion bailout. Inflation was 9.5% in November, one of many highest in a long time.
Tackling inflation will probably be her largest problem in her subsequent time period whereas the highlight will probably be on how she offers with upholding democracy.
(Aside from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
