Dhaka, Feb 14 (PTI) Bangladesh’s president-elect Mohammad Shahabuddin on Tuesday called on incumbent President Abdul Hamid, a day after the election commission declared that the former would to be the country’s 22nd head of the state.
“The president-elect met president Hamid and the first lady who greeted him with a bouquet at Bangabhaban this evening (Tuesday) for the courtesy call on,” a presidential palace spokesman told PTI.
The spokesman said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her younger sister Sheikh Rehana were also present as Shahabuddin reached Bangabhaban along with his spouse.
The tenure of Hamid, who was a lawyer by profession, veteran of ruling Awami League and parliamentary Speaker, ends on April 24.
The election commission on Monday declared 74-year-old Shahabuddin as the next president-elect.
Awami League nominated Shahabuddin, who was elected unopposed, since no other party in the parliament put forward any candidate.
“He is elected unopposed,” Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal declared on Monday.
The announcement hours later came in a gazette notification when the outgoing president dialled him up to greet his successor.
According to Bangladesh Constitution, lawmakers elect the head of the state.
While the Awami League has the majority with 305 members in the 350-seat parliament, no voting was required to declare Shahabuddin the next president due to absence of any other nominee.
The official opposition in the parliament, Jatiya Party decided to nominate none for the highest office and the main opposition outside parliament, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), could not nominate anyone since all of its seven lawmakers resigned in December 2022.
The BNP MPs quit as part of their anti-government campaign ahead of general elections expected to be held in December this year.
Shahabuddin’s nomination came as a surprise as his name did not surface until the filing of the nomination amid speculation in the media about the next president.
“Even many top leaders and the rank and file of the party seemed to have been caught off-guard after his name was announced,” the Daily Star newspaper commented.
The mass circulation Prothom Alo, a Bangla language newspaper, carried a front page analysis headlined “The Awami League leaders curiosity is yet to subside over Mohammad Shahabuddin’s nomination”.
Awami League Parliamentary Party (ALPP) earlier had entrusted party chief Hasina with the task of nominating a candidate for the presidency and she nominated Shahabuddin.
Born in 1949 and hailing from the northwestern Pabna district, Shahabuddin is a retired district judge who later served as one of the commissioners of the independent Anti-Corruption Commission.
He later joined politics and became a member of the Awami League Advisory Council, which comprises senior party leaders and technocrats but his election to the highest office would require him to relinquish the party post.
In his early life, Shahabuddin was a leader of Awami League’s student and youth wings in the late 1960s and early 1970s while he took part in the 1971 Liberation War.
He was imprisoned for waging a protest after the August 15, 1975 assassination of Bangladesh’s founder Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman — the father of Prime Minister Hasina — in a military coup along with most of his family members.
The coup also led to the toppling of the Awami League government.
In 1982, he was inducted into the country’s judicial service.
Shahabuddin’s wife Rebeka Sultana is the former joint secretary to the government. The couple has one son. PTI AR PY PY
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