New Delhi: As Bangladesh grapples with political uncertainty, opposition parties accuse the country’s interim Chief Adviser, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, of deliberately hindering electoral reforms to postpone general national elections.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) alleged that the Yunus administration is offering nothing but “empty gestures” in the guise of being genuine to delay polls.
A prominent BNP leader and Standing Committee member, Salahuddin Ahmed, expressed deep frustration over the issue. Speaking at an event commemorating party founder Ziaur Rahman in Dhaka on Sunday, Ahmed claimed that the Yunus administration lacks concrete steps to ensure elections are held by 2025, rather than being delayed to 2026.
This accusation comes days after Yunus himself indicated polls would be held between December 2025 and June 2026, indicating that reforms needed to be done before the elections. Ahmed questioned the repeated “inaugurations” of these reforms, asserting they were “not substantive in reality” and merely a pretence, likening them to empty promises.
“Again, in the third phase, you have merged things together … you are just showing us the ‘banana of reforms’,” he said.
Referring to Yunus’s latest invitation for inter-party talks, Ahmed sharply criticised the Chief Adviser for what he described as “backtracking on earlier assurances” that elections would be held by December. “You told us there would be an election by December, but then you backtracked. That is unfortunate,” he condemned, challenging Yunus on the continued delay of reforms under various pretexts.
The political divide widened further with BNP Standing Committee Member Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury directly responding to comments Yunus made during a session at the 30th Nikkei Forum in Tokyo. Yunus had stated that “only some politicians” desired elections this year, arguing that the country needed “six more months” for adequate reforms to avoid leaving “old institutions remaining as it is.”
“We don’t want to leave the country with the old institutions remaining as it is. If we need a good job in the reforms, we have to wait for six more months (for the election). Some opinions let’s get the election done, but it is not all, just one particular party,” he said.
Chowdhury vehemently countered this, claiming that only a handful of “unregistered” parties, formed after the recent protests in the country, are actually against a December election. He insisted that “at least 52 parties want polls by December,” directly challenging Yunus’s assertion about a single party’s preference.
