New Delhi, (EFE). – Muhammad Yunus, head of Bangladesh’s interim government, announced on Tuesday that the next general elections will be in February 2026.
“On behalf of the interim government, I will write to the chief election commissioner, requesting that the Election Commission arrange the national election in February 2026, before Ramadan,” Yunus said on Tuesday night in a televised speech marking one year of the July Uprising.
Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the Grameen Bank, known for granting microcredits to the poorest, stressed that the three responsibilities of the interim government are reform, justice, and elections, and affirmed that the time has come to fulfill the last one.
Yunus assured that the country must ensure that no future government can become fascist again. The state must be restructured so that, whenever signs of fascism appear, they can be eradicated immediately.”
The interim leader called on the population, especially women, to vote and turn election day into a civic holiday comparable to Ramadan.
He pointed out that many voters will go to the polls for the first time and said that this election “will lay the foundation for a new Bangladesh.”
A year ago, the July Uprising, initiated by students against a public employment quota system, turned into a wave of national discontent that led to the fall of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her party, the Awami League, after 15 years in power.
According to UN data, the repression of the protests left at least 1,400 people dead.
Since then, the country has experienced a transitional period marked by institutional reforms and internal and external pressures to establish an electoral calendar.
The main opposition parties, including the Awami League in exile and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, demanded elections before the end of 2025.
Hasina, who has been in exile in India for the past year, wrote in an open letter published Tuesday that she never resigned from her duties as prime minister, and described the anniversary as the “fall of democracy.”
Hasina also accused the interim government of provoking daily acts of violence and arbitrary persecution, calling on members of the outlawed Awami League to continue the struggle for justice. EFE
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