Bangladesh to hold elections in late 2025 or early 2026

Bangladesh's interim leader Muhammad Yunus, who heads the caretaker government installed after an August revolution, said on Monday that general elections would be held late next year or in early 2026.

Pressure has been growing on Nobel Peace Prize winner Yunus - appointed the country's "chief adviser" after the student-led uprising that toppled ex-premier Sheikh Hasina - to set a date.

The 84-year-old microfinance pioneer is leading a temporary administration to tackle what he has called the "extremely tough" challenge of restoring democratic institutions in the South Asian nation of about 170 million people.

"Election dates could be fixed by the end of 2025 or the first half of 2026," he said in a broadcast on state television.

Yunus has launched commissions to oversee a raft of reforms he says are needed, and setting an election date depends on what political parties agree."Throughout, I have emphasised that reforms should take place first before the arrangements for an election," he said.

"If the political parties agree to hold the election on an earlier date with minimum reforms, such as having a flawless voter list, the election could be held... by the end of 2025," he added.

"But including the full list of electoral reforms would delay polls by a few months," he said.

"Key among the reforms needed is an updated voter list, a "complex" challenge after years of turbulent democratic processes, requiring both the stripping of false names from lists, alongside registering first time voters in a rapidly growing youth population," he said.

Yunus said he dreamed of "ensuring 100 per cent voter turnout" in polls."If this can be achieved, no government will ever dare to strip citizens of their voting rights again," he said.

Bangladesh's army chief General Waker-uz-Zaman, whose refusal to support Hasina during the deadly student protests led to her departure, told reporters in September that democracy should be restored within 12 to 18 months.

Hasina, 77, fled by helicopter to neighbouring India on Aug.5 as thousands of protesters stormed the prime minister's palace in Dhaka.

Hundreds of people were killed in the weeks prior to Hasina's ouster, most by police gunfire.

Scores more died in the hours after her toppling, largely in reprisal killings against prominent supporters of her Awami League party.

Her government was also accused of politicising courts and the civil service, as well as staging lopsided elections, to dismantle democratic checks on its power.

Hasina's rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.

Bangladesh last held general elections in January when Hasina celebrated victory - in a poll denounced as neither free nor fair and boycotted by rivals after a crackdown during which thousands of opposition party members were arrested.

Former opposition groups, such as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), are now rebuilding after years of repression under Hasina.

Opposition parties including the BNP, one of two dominant parties in the country alongside the Awami League, have called for elections to be held as soon as possible.

Yunus has said his administration is also focused on ensuring those guilty of abuses during the past government face justice, including issuing a warrant for Hasina's arrest.

On Sunday, a Bangladesh commission probing abuses during the rule of Hasina has recommended a much-feared armed police unit be disbanded.

The Commission of Inquiry into Enforced Disappearances, set up by the caretaker government, said it found initial evidence that Hasina and other ex-senior officials were involved in the enforced disappearances alleged to have been carried out by the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB).

The RAB paramilitary police force was sanctioned by the United States in 2021, alongside seven of its senior officers, in response to reports of its culpability in some of the worst rights abuses committed during Hasina's 15-year-long rule.

"RAB has never abided by the law and was seldom held accountable for its atrocities, which include enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and abductions," Nur Khan Liton, a member of the commission, told AFP.

The commission handed its preliminary report to Yunus late on Saturday.

The  BNP also called for RAB's abolition.

Senior BNP leader M. Hafizuddin Ahmed told reporters that the force was too rotten to be reformed.

"When a patient suffers from gangrene, according to medical studies, the only solution is to amputate the affected organ," he said.

The elite police unit was launched in 2004, billed as a way to provide rapid results in a country where the judicial system was notoriously slow.

But the unit earned a grim reputation for extrajudicial killings and was accused of supporting Hasina's political ambitions by suppressing dissent through abductions and murders.

Agencies