Bangladesh: Rift deepens among Yunus-led interim govt allies

A key adviser in the Muhammad Yunus-led Bangladesh interim government on Wednesday rejected claims by its key ally, the student-led National Citizen Party (NCP), that the advisers were now looking for a “safe exit” amid a visibly changing political scenario. “I am not seeking any exit at all,” environment and climate change affairs adviser Syeda Rizwana Hasan told reporters when asked about NCP convenor Nahid Islam’s recent comments that the advisers were seeking a “safe exit” through negotiations with political parties. Islam did not explain why the advisers were seeking a “safe exit” or named them or the parties they were negotiating with as he was interviewed by a private TV channel on Saturday.
Three days after Islam’s comments, another key-NCP leader Sarjis Alam on Tuesday told reporters that the only exit that remained open for advisers was “death”. The NCP is regarded as the government’s closest ally while the comments of its leaders come amid growing speculations about the course of Bangladesh politics ahead of planned national elections in February next year.  Hasan, however, said she would spend the “rest of my life in Bangladesh” but demanded explanation of NCP leaders’ comments.
The NCP emerged as a political party visibly with Yunus’s blessings in February this year as a large offshoot of the Students against Discrimination (SAD) movement that led the last year’s violent street campaign dubbed as the ‘July Uprising’ that eventually toppled then prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League regime on August 5. Meanwhile, a special tribunal in Bangladesh on Wednesday issued arrest warrants against deposed prime minister Hasina and 29 others on charges of crimes against humanity in alleged cases of enforced disappearances during her Awami League regime.