Bangladesh Parliament dissolved, president's office says

Bangladesh’s parliament was dissolved on Tuesday, the president’s office said in a statement, a day after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country following violent protests demanding her ouster.

The announcement came hours after protesting student leaders set a deadline to dissolve parliament and warned a “strict programme” would be launched if their deadline is not met.

Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman announced Monday that Hasina had resigned after weeks of deadly protests, and the military would form a caretaker government.

Hasina, 76, had been in power since 2009 but was accused of rigging elections in January and then watched millions of people take to the streets over the past month demanding she step down.

Hours later President Mohammed Shahabuddin — after a meeting with the army chief — said it had been decided to free all those arrested during the student protests, as well as key opposition leader Khaleda Zia.

Ex-prime minister Zia, 78, chairperson of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is in poor health and was largely under house arrest after being sentenced to 17 years in prison for graft in 2018.

‘Nobel winner Yunus should lead caretaker government’

Bangladesh student protesters said Tuesday they would push for Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus to lead an interim government, a day after the prime minister was ousted and the military took charge.

“We have decided that the interim government would be formed in which internationally renowned Nobel Laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus, who has wide acceptability, would be the chief adviser,” Nahid Islam, the main leader of Students Against Discrimination (SAD), said in a video message.

Yunus, 84, a respected economist, is credited with lifting millions out of poverty with his pioneering microfinance bank but earned the enmity of Hasina, who accused him of “sucking blood” from the poor.