NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Long-time Bangladeshi leader Sheikh Hasina had not resigned as prime minister before fleeing this week to India as anti-government protesters marched on her official residence, her son and adviser told Reuters early on Saturday.
Hasina has been sheltering in New Delhi since Monday following an uprising that killed about 300 people, many of them students, ending her uninterrupted rule of 15 years in the country of 170 million people.
“My mother never officially resigned. She didn’t get the time,” Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed told Reuters from Washington.
“She had planned to make a statement and submit her resignation. But then the protesters started marching on the prime minister’s residence. And there was no time. My mother wasn’t even packed. As far as the constitution goes, she is still the prime minister of Bangladesh.”
He said though the president had dissolved parliament after consulting with military chiefs and opposition politicians, the formation of a caretaker government without the prime minister actually formally resigning “can be challenged in court”.
Wazed also said Hasina’s Awami League party would contest the next election, which he said must be held within three months.
“I’m confident the Awami League will come to power. If not, we will be the opposition. Either way is fine,” he said.
He said he was encouraged by a recent statement from Khaleda Zia, chief of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and a Hasina foe, that there should be no revenge or vengeance after Hasina fled.
“I was very happy to hear Mrs. Khaleda Zia’s statement that let bygones be bygones,” Wazed said. “Let’s forget the past. Let us not pursue the politics of vengeance. We are going to have to work together, whether it’s a unity government or not.”
He said he was “willing to work with the BNP … to have democratic elections in Bangladesh and restore democracy and to work with them to ensure that going forward, we have peaceful democracy where there will be free and fair elections”.
“I believe that politics and negotiations are very important,” he said. “We can argue. We can agree to disagree. And we can always find a compromise.”
Asked whether he would be the Awami League’s prime ministerial candidate, he said: “My mother was going to retire after this term anyway. If the party wants me to, maybe. I will definitely consider it.”
He said his mother was ready to face trial back home, as demanded by students who led the uprising.
“The threat of arrest has never scared my mother before,” he said. “My mother has done nothing wrong. Just because people in her government did illegal things, did not mean my mother ordered it. That does not mean my mother is responsible for that.”
He did not say who in the government was responsible for allowing the shooting of people during the protests.
“A government is a big, big machinery,” Wazed said. “Those who are responsible, they should be brought to justice. My mother absolutely did not order anyone to commit violence against the protesters. The police were trying to stop the violence, but some police officers used excessive force.”
“Our government immediately, and I was part of those conversations, I also told my mother, we need to immediately tell (our students wing) not to attack, stop the violence,” he said.
“We suspended the police officers that shot at students. We did everything we could.”
He said he would return home when he liked.
“I have never done anything illegal. So, how is anyone going to stop me?” he said. “The political parties are not going anywhere. You cannot wipe us out. Without our help, without our supporters, you are not going to be able to bring stability to Bangladesh.”
(Reporting by Krishna N. Das in New Delhi; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
