Bangladesh Army chief calls for national consensus, ‘political government’, tones down anti-India rhetoric

Bangladesh needs to build an environment that will allow reconciliation among various stakeholders of the nation, Army chief General Waker-uz-Zaman said. Bangladesh came very close to having a public showdown between the Anti-discrimination Students Movement and the military-backed interim administration, on December 31, 2024, when student activists, still triumphant from the successful overthrow of the Sheikh Hasina government five months previously, wanted to “bury” the Constitution of Bangladesh. The call for a “July proclamation” to do away with the 1972 Constitution, which has been followed even by the former military rulers of Bangladesh, created a tense situation on the streets, and finally, the interim government came out with an assurance that it would declare its own July proclamation to formalise the legacy of the uprising in July-August. Surprisingly, the call to do away with the Constitution found opposition from prominent leaders in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, with standing committee member Mirza Abbas describing the call to dismantle the 1972 Constitution as “fascist”. Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman pledged full support to the interim government led by Chief Adviser Mohammad Yunus but, significantly, declared explicitly that the restoration of institutions in the country would depend on a politically empowered government.