New protests in Bangladesh demand removal of president

Several hundred protesters on Tuesday, 22 October, tried to storm the presidential palace, demanding President Mohammed Shahabuddin’s resignation for his recent comment on deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

In an interview with Bangla daily Manab Zamin last week, Shahabuddin said he did not have any documentary evidence of Hasina resigning as prime minister before she fled the country on 5 August amidst student-led mass protests.

Witnesses and TV footage showed protestors under different banners scuffling with police as they barred the demonstrators from entering the presidential palace, Banga Bhaban.

The police eventually fired sound grenades, prompting army troops to later intervene and then send policemen inside the palace.

The situation eased a little as the military using loudspeakers requested agitators to leave the Bangabhaban gate.

The Business Standard, a Bangladeshi daily, quoted hospital sources as saying that two people sustained gunshot injuries when security forces fired shots to contain protesters from breaking the barricades of the presidential palace.

It said a third person was wounded by a sound grenade used to create a sound explosion to disperse violent mobs.

The Anti-discrimination Student Movement, which spearheaded the campaign that led to the ouster of Hasina, rallied in front of the Central Shaheed Minar here, demanding Shahabuddin’s resignation.

It set a seven-day deadline for Shahabuddin’s removal and laid out a five-point demand, including the scrapping of Bangladesh’s 1972 Constitution drawn up under the leadership of the nation's founding father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman — who went on to become its president and is also Sheikh Hasina's father.

“Our first point [of the five-point demand] is immediate scrapping of the pro-Mujib 1972 Constitution' which kept Chuppu in office,” said Hasnat Abdullah, one of the coordinators of the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement. ['Chuppu' is President Shahabuddin's nickname.]

Abdullah, who spoke as the concluding speaker at a massive rally at the Central Shaheed Minar in Dhaka, said: “The (1972) Constitution will have to be replaced by writing a new one against the backdrop of 2024 mass upheaval.”

He said the protestors would “return to the streets in full force” if the government failed to meet the demands by this week.

Several other groups under different banners joined Tuesday’s protests alongside the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement at the premier Dhaka University campus, Shaheed Minar and Bangabhaban.

Law affairs adviser (equivalent to minister) to Professor Muhammad Yunus’ interim government Asif Nazrul earlier accused Shahabuddin of “falsehood”, saying his remarks were “tantamount to violation of his oath of office”.

He added that if he remained firm on his comments, the interim government would need to think whether he was still qualified to hold office.

In a televised address on 5 August night, Shahabuddin had said: “You know Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has tendered her resignation letter to the president and I have received it.” He made the remarks as army chief General Waker uz Zaman, along with the Bangladesh navy and air chiefs, stood beside him.

Nazrul on Tuesday said that after his nationwide speech, if Shahabuddin declined receiving the resignation letter, one of his two statements must be false and he would face a charge of uttering a falsehood in the conduct of his duties.

The law affairs adviser and information ministry adviser Nahid Islam, also a leader of the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement, later held a nearly 40-minute closed-door meeting with Chief Justice Syed Refaat Ahmed, amid media speculation that it could have centred on the modus operandi of removing the president.

Constitution expert Shahdhin Malik said Bangladesh’s parliament has the authority to impeach the president, but the “interim government may take any action (against the president) as many things are now happening beyond the law”.

Malik also said an “unnecessary debate is going on over the documentary evidence of Hasina’s resignation letter amid the existing reality”.

“After the toppling of Sheikh Hasina’s government, the interim government has been formed based on the Supreme Court’s opinion... No debate is required about it,” he said.

Bangabhaban, meanwhile, in a statement said the president urged the people not to reignite controversy over a “settled issue”.

“This is a clear statement from the president that answers regarding the resignation and departure of the former prime minister (Hasina) in the face of the students–people mass revolution, the dissolution of the Parliament and all the questions raised in the public mind about the Constitutional validity of the incumbent Interim government are reflected in the order of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in Special Reference No-01/2024, dated August 8, 2024,” the statement said.

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, 84, became chief adviser to Bangladesh’s interim government on 8 August after Prime Minister Hasina fled to India on 5 August.