Weeks ahead of the national elections in Bangladesh, the nation’s ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina launched a scathing attack on the interim chief, Muhammad Yunus. Labeling him as an “usurer, a money launderer, a plunderer, and a corrupt, power-hungry traitor,” Hasina alleged Yunus has bled Bangladesh “dry with his all-consuming paradigms, staining the soul of the motherland.”
In her speech from Delhi, Sheikh Hasina said that the entire nation must rise united and “galvanized by the spirit of our great Liberation War in this grave hour”.
She made the comments in an audio message played at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of South Asia in New Delhi, on Friday, 23 January.
When elections will be held in Bangladesh?
Bangladesh is set to undergo parliamentary elections on February 12, 2026.
Last year, in May, the Bangladesh Election Commission suspended the registration of the Hasina-led Awami League as a party. The Interim Government has also banned all activities by the Awami League.
During her speech on Friday, Sheikh Hasina alleged that since August 5, 2024, when she was forced out of Bangladesh, democracy had effectively been driven into exile.
Bangladesh stands today “at the edge of an abyss, a nation battered and bleeding, navigating one of the most dangerous chapters in its history,” said Hasina.
“The homeland won through the supreme Liberation War under the leadership of the Father of the Nation, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, is now ravaged by the monstrous onslaught of extremist communal forces and foreign perpetrators. Our once serene and fertile land has been reduced to a wounded, blood-soaked landscape. In truth, the entire country has become a vast prison, an execution ground, a valley of death,” she said.
(This is a developing story. Keep checking for more updates)
