Dhaka, Bangladesh – Maliha Namlah says she had been holding her breath since Monday when student-led protests in Bangladesh forced longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee the country after weeks of deadly unrest in which more than 300 people were killed.
Namlah, 19, was one of the coordinators of the student movement at Jahangirnagar University on the outskirts of the capital, Dhaka. As soon as Hasina’s government fell, her only worry was whether it would be replaced with another military rule in a country that has seen several coups since its independence from Pakistan in 1971.
But the current army chief, General Waker-uz-Zaman, has been hailed for announcing the formation of an interim government as soon as Hasina fled.
“We didn’t fight and shed blood for a military government. We wanted a civilian government that will bring genuine reforms,” Namlah told Al Jazeera on Friday.
“And we are relieved to see that that happened quickly.”
Three days after Hasina quit, Muhammad Yunus, the South Asian country’s only Nobel laureate, was sworn in on Thursday night as the “chief adviser” of a caretaker government tasked to bring peace and democracy, both of which Hasina’s critics said were undermined during her 15 years of “autocratic” rule.
The chief adviser of the caretaker government holds the rank of the prime minister while members of the advisory council are granted the status of ministers.
As the new administration takes over in Dhaka, many are wondering whether it will be able to take the country of 170 million people out of what one of the members of the new government called a “dark era”.
“The army chief had promised an interim government, but until it was officially established, uncertainty remained due to widespread speculation,” Saifullah Sajib, an employee at a travel agency in Dhaka, told Al Jazeera as he watched a live telecast of Yunus and his 16-member cabinet take their oaths at the presidential palace.
Why was Yunus picked?
The protests in Bangladesh that began last month were led mainly by tens of thousands of university students opposed to a quota system for government jobs that they alleged favoured those close to Hasina’s Awami League party.
The primarily peaceful demonstrators were attacked by both the security forces as well as supporters of Hasina’s party, resulting in nearly 300 deaths and transforming the protests into a larger call for Hasina to quit.
Hours after she resigned and fled to neighbouring India in a military aircraft, the Students Against Discrimination, an umbrella group of student movements that led the protests, proposed 84-year-old Yunus as the head of an interim government.
Yunus, an economist and banker, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his efforts to bring millions of people out of poverty through microloans. He is also a longtime critic of Hasina and hailed the success of the student-led protests as a “second independence day” for Bangladesh.
“I feel so relieved to see Dr Yunus sworn in as the head of the interim government,” Abdullah Al Mamun, a businessman in the garments industry, told Al Jazeera. “I hope that someone with his credentials will be able to guide the country through this crisis.”
‘Freedom to every home’
After his swearing-in on Thursday, Yunus told reporters as he was flanked by student leaders: “Bangladesh is a family. We have to unite it. It has immense possibility.”
He said his government’s “foremost promise is to ensure that everyone can enjoy the fresh air of freedom”.
“We must ensure that the benefits of this freedom extend to every citizen. Otherwise, it would be meaningless. Therefore, we commit to bringing freedom to every home,” he said, adding that those who committed wrongdoing during Hasina’s tenure “will be held accountable”.
Analysts said one of Yunus’s main challenges will be to ensure law and order after days of chaos that saw attacks on the houses of Awami League politicians, sporadic attacks on temples and homes of minority Hindus who were considered close to the ousted Hasina, and a general absence of policing, manifested by students this week managing traffic on the busy streets of Dhaka.
Acknowledging the disorder, Asif Nazrul, professor of law at Dhaka University and member of Yunus’s interim government tasked with running the Ministry of Law and Justice, said it is grappling with multiple challenges due to the unprecedented situation in the country.
“Under [Hasina’s] autocratic rule, it was a dark era, and the people’s profound anger against the regime led to this eruption. However, we can no longer support such outbursts as they have exceeded acceptable limits,” he said.
Who else is in the government?
The interim government is a mix of both experience and youth and includes rights activists, professors, lawyers, former government officials and other prominent members of Bangladesh’s civil society.
But it is the surprise inclusion of two 26-year-old student leaders who spearheaded the recent movement against Hasina that is likely to be a talking point in the coming days.
Nahid Islam, a student of sociology at Dhaka University, has been given the telecommunications portfolio while Asif Mahmud, a student of linguistics at the same university, will look after sports.
“If Bangladesh is led by its youth, the country will stay true to its goals,” Islam said on Thursday.
Mahmud said he was ready for the challenges ahead. “The state institutions were devastated under [Hasina’s] fascist regime. Our goal is to eradicate fascism by reforming these institutions,” he said.
Former army officer M Sakhawat Hossain has been given the Ministry of Home Affairs. He used to be close to Hasina’s Awami League but supported the student protests against her government.
The Ministry of Finance has been given to Saleh Uddin Ahmed, who governed the central bank during the 2001-2006 rule of the opposition Bangladeshi Nationalist Party (BNP). Former diplomat and columnist Touhid Hossain will look after foreign affairs.
Other notable figures in the new government are climate change minister Syeda Rizwana Hasan, a winner of the Ramon Magsaysay Award – often referred to as Asia’s Nobel Prize – for her environmental work; rights activist Adilur Rahman Khan, who will handle industries; electoral reforms activist Sharmeen Murshid, charged with the Ministry of Social Welfare; and women’s rights activist and advocate for biodiversity-based ecological agriculture Farida Akhter, who will run the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock.
The other members of the cabinet are former Attorney General Hasan Ariff (local government affairs), Yunus’s longtime associate Nurjahan Begum (health) and Muslim leader and academic Khalid Hossain (religious matters).
The portfolios of the remaining three members – psychiatrist Bidhan Ranjan Roy from the minority Hindu community, former diplomat Supradip Chakma from the Indigenous Chakma community, based in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, and independence fighter Faruk-e-Azam – have not been declared.
Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program and senior associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in the United States, told Al Jazeera that “on paper”, the interim government with its “wide array of leaders from all walks of life looks remarkably diverse”.
“But how everything fits together and whether a consensus is possible is unclear. This is where Yunus’s leadership will be essential,” he said.
Challenges ahead
One of the biggest allegations against Hasina’s long rule was her abuse of the security apparatus, mainly the police and a paramilitary force, which she used against political adversaries and is also accused of using to manipulate elections to help her hang on to power.
Most recently, the police were employed against the antigovernment protesters in clashes that killed dozens of people as police officers fired live ammunition on demonstrators, intensifying the people’s anger against them.
Since Hasina’s fall, an absence of law enforcement officials on the streets have seen people set up nighttime patrols to protect their neighbourhoods and the property of vulnerable minorities, mainly Hindus.
After taking his oath, Yunus told reporters those “instigating anarchy” will face the “full force of law enforcement” and made assurances that “both the triumphant students and the public will work together to ensure their failure”.
Khan, who now runs the Ministry of Industries, said the most complex task before the new administration will be to “dismantle the remnants of Hasina’s autocratic rule”.
“This will involve making new appointments across nearly all positions in various departments and divisions, including law enforcement, the judiciary and different ministries,” he said.
He said the new government will investigate all instances of human rights violations that occurred during Hasina’s tenure. “Upholding human rights will be a primary focus of the interim government,” he said.
Ali Riaz, distinguished professor of politics and government at Illinois State University in the US, told Al Jazeera the interim government “possesses both strengths and weaknesses, as is typical with any group”, and said he hoped more people will be brought into the government as it begins its work and assesses its needs.
He said having younger individuals, especially students, in the cabinet was a positive development. “They should be able to reflect the perspectives of the younger generation and may offer innovative approaches and challenge traditional methods of governance,” he said.
Riaz identified three immediate challenges before the interim government. The first is to establish a clear direction for the future. People have differing expectations, and some may demand immediate elections while others may call for structural reforms, he said.
The second challenge, he said, is the economy. He said the government should implement “measures that benefit the general public” and demonstrate that “this government is distinct from its predecessors”.
And the third challenge, Riaz said, is to reassess Bangladesh’s relationships with regional and global powers. “Over the past 15 years, these relationships, especially with India, had been shaped in ways that may have been detrimental to the country’s national interests,” he said.
Many in Bangladesh fear Hasina’s close ties with New Delhi may force the new administration to take an anti-India stance, which analysts said could be detrimental to improving the economy.
Will elections be held?
Journalist and commentator Shayan S Khan told Al Jazeera the primary mandate of the interim government will “clearly be to conduct free and fair elections”. He said conducting polls should be a relatively straightforward task for a nonpartisan interim government with no vested interests.
“However, the circumstances of the Awami League’s departure might require additional time for it to regroup and prepare for the election, which could pose a challenge for the interim government. Without the Awami League, the election could lack a certain level of credibility,” he added.
Kugelman, on the other hand, anticipated a long haul for the interim government and even the emergence of a new party, “perhaps led by Yunus and the protest leaders”.
The main opposition BNP wants immediate elections, which Kugelman said could be a spoiler in the coming days. “The key question is how the BNP, by virtue of its size and clout as the biggest beneficiary of Hasina’s ouster, adjusts to a new reality that won’t necessarily defer to the BNP’s power,” he said.
BNP politician Amir Khashru Mahmud Chowdhury said that while the interim government faces the “tough task of building the country from the ruins of the Awami League’s massive corruption, systematic destruction of the judiciary and bureaucracy”, it should also think about elections.
“I think the people would definitely prefer to exercise their democratic rights of voting, which in the Awami era was not possible,” Chowdhury told Al Jazeera. “So I would urge the government to give people the scope of exercising their democratic rights.”
But there is also a lack of clarity among experts over whether an interim government must hold elections within 90 days of taking charge.
Supreme Court lawyer Shahdeen Malik told Al Jazeera an “extraordinary government” has been formed in Bangladesh under “extraordinary circumstances”.
“It is called an interim government, or some even call it a caretaker government with Dr Yunus as its chief adviser, but the fact is there is no provision in our constitution for the formation of such a government after the 15th Amendment [to the constitution], which removed the provision for such a government,” he said.
In June 2011, during her first of four consecutive terms, Hasina’s government introduced the 15th Amendment to prevent any “unelected government” from assuming power. The move followed a Supreme Court ruling that had declared a caretaker government formed by the military from 2006 to 2008 was illegal because it remained in office for more than two years without calling elections within the mandated 90 days.
Malik said that since there is no longer a constitutional provision, the interim government under Yunus is not obliged to hold elections within 90 days. He added, however, that the functioning of the new government could be legalised by making another amendment to the constitution.
“General Ziaur Rahman did that through the Fifth Amendment, and General Hussain Mohammad Ershad did that through the Seventh Amendment. So this government will likely do the same,” Malik concluded.
Badiul Alam Majumder of Citizens for Good Governance, a civil society group campaigning for political reforms, told Al Jazeera the Awami League’s unilateral passage of the 15th Amendment in a “majoritarian fashion effectively weaponised” the constitution and undermined the political establishment.
He demanded the abolition of the caretaker government system, which he said had led to three “failed” elections in the country, in 2014, 2018 and 2024. He also called for amendments instead to include provisions that ensure free and fair elections in a “deeply divided and fractured country”.