\n Bangladesh's Muhammad Yunus \"needs to remain\" in office as interim leader to ensure a peaceful transition of power, a cabinet member and special adviser to Yunus said Friday.\n<\/p>\n
\n Yunus, the 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner who took over after a mass uprising last year, had threatened to quit the job if parties did not give him their backing, a political ally and sources in his office said.\n<\/p>\n
\n The South Asian nation has been in political turmoil since the student-led revolt that toppled then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024, with parties protesting on the streets over a string of demands.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"For the sake of Bangladesh and a peaceful democratic transition, Professor Yunus needs to remain in office,\" Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, a special assistant to Yunus, and head of the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, said in a post on Facebook.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The Chief Adviser is not going to step down,\" he added. \"He does not hanker after power.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n He later deleted his post.\n<\/p>\n
\n Bangladesh's political crisis has escalated this week, with rival parties protesting on the streets of the capital Dhaka with a string of competing demands.\n<\/p>\n
\n Yunus's reported threat to stand down came after thousands of supporters of the powerful Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) rallied in Dhaka on Wednesday, holding large-scale protests against the interim government for the first time.\n<\/p>\n
\n Yunus has promised polls will be held by June 2026 at the latest in the Muslim-majority nation of around 170 million people.\n<\/p>\n
\n But supporters of the BNP -- seen as front-runners in the highly anticipated elections that will be the first since Hasina was overthrown -- demanded he fix a date.\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Chaotic phase' -\n<\/p>\n
\n Yunus's relationship with the military has also reportedly deteriorated.\n<\/p>\n
\n According to local media and military sources, army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman said on Wednesday that elections should be held by December, warning that Bangladesh was in a \"chaotic phase\" and that the \"situation is worsening by the day\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Taiyeb issued a warning to the army on Friday. \"The army can't meddle in politics,\" he wrote.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The army doesn't do that in any civilised country,\" he added.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"By saying that the election has to be held by December, the military chief failed to maintain his jurisdictional correctness.\"\n<\/p>\n
\n - 'Excessive restriction' -\n<\/p>\n
\n The army played a decisive role in the ending of Hasina's rule by not stepping in to quash the uprising, after at least 1,400 protesters were killed in a police crackdown.\n<\/p>\n
\n It was Waker-Uz-Zaman who announced that Hasina had been overthrown, with the military taking brief control, before handing over to Yunus.\n<\/p>\n
\n The army issued a statement late on Thursday it said was aimed to combat those seeking to create divisions between the military and the public.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"Some vested interest groups are circulating misleading information and trying to create a divide between the army and the general public,\" the army said in a statement late Thursday.\n<\/p>\n
\n It released a list of the hundreds of people it had briefly sheltered inside army bases in the chaotic days following Hasina's ouster \"to save them from extrajudicial killings\".\n<\/p>\n
\n Among those the army said it sheltered to \"save lives\" were 24 political figures, as well as judges, civil service staff, academics and more 525 police personnel.\n<\/p>\n
\n The army did not give details on those it accused of seeking to undermine its support.\n<\/p>\n
\n The National Citizen Party (NCP) -- made up of many of the students who spearheaded the uprising against Hasina, and a group close to Yunus -- has previously accused of the army of supporting Hasina's Awami League party.\n<\/p>\n
\n Hasina, 77, remains in self-imposed exile in India, where she has defied an arrest warrant to face trial for crimes against humanity related to the police crackdown.\n<\/p>\n
\n The government banned the Awami League this month after protests outside Yunus's house, a move that sparked criticism from Human Rights Watch, calling it an \"excessive restriction on fundamental freedoms that mirrors the previous government's abusive clampdown\".<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bangladesh's Muhammad Yunus \"needs to remain\" in office as interim leader to ensure a peaceful transition of power, a cabinet member and special adviser to Yunus said Friday. Yunus, the 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner who took over after a mass uprising last year, had threatened to quit the job if parties did not give […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-145745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n