Dhaka, Oct 6 (PTI) A senior official of the Bangladesh government on Tuesday said that “reconciliation” with the now-disbanded Awami League is “not a bad idea”, but the party led by deposed premier Sheikh Hasina must come forward by acknowledging its responsibility to initiate such a process.
Zahed Ur Rahman, the prime minister’s information advisor, made the comments during a press conference here. His comments were the first reconciliatory tone by a leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) government that came amid a sense of unease in Bangladesh’s political and economic arena.
“Taking an initiative for reconciliation with the active activists and supporters of Awami League is not a bad idea. Rather, it would be good if such an initiative was taken,” he told reporters.
“If someone in the middle wants reconciliation and thinks it is a good initiative, then I also think it is a good idea,” he said.
“They (mediators) should reach out to Awami League. The basic ground for initiating reconciliation needs to be established through discussions with the party’s top leadership. If that is ensured, the matter can be discussed,” Zahed said.
He did not clarify whom he meant by “someone in the middle”.
Zahed, however, said basic conditions for such a process were still absent as the party leadership showed no “remorse for its actions”, a reference to the ousted Awami League government’s violent crackdown during mass protests against the government in 2024.
The protests toppled Hasina’s Awami League government, following which she fled to India. An interim government led by Muhammad Yunus took over to govern the country for the next 18 months.
The interim administration and the current government repeatedly demanded her “extradition”. In August, Hasina announced she would return voluntarily to face the legal process and reiterated her decision in several subsequent interactions with international and Indian media.
Since the 2024 political transition, several top-tier BNP leaders explicitly called Awami League a “politically irrelevant” having no chance stage a comeback to the political arena while most of its senior leaders were on the run at home and abroad or were in jail.
In a press conference on June 23, Zahed had said people’s memory would need to be wiped out for Awami League to return and “we would have to develop dementia and forget everything” and only then might it be possible for the party to return to politics.
On several occasions, Prime Minister Tarique Rahman has said that Awami League essentially ruled itself out of the future democratic landscape, while BNP’s acting secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi repeatedly said the party had effectively “dumped itself into the trash bin of history”. PTI AR ZH
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