Bangladesh, February,17 :
Bangladesh’ s new prime minister was sworn in on Tuesday (February 17) after his party’s landslide win in last week’s parliamentary elections, the country’s first since the massive 2024 uprising. The vote was billed as key to Bangladesh’s future political landscape after years of intense rivalry and disputed polls.
Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, whose term will last the next five years, is the son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and former President Ziaur Rahman. He is also Bangladesh’s first male prime minister in 35 years.
The country’s figurehead President Mohammed Shahabuddin administered the oath of office for Rahman. Dozens of cabinet members and members of the new government were also being sworn in.
Lok Sabha speaker Om Birla represented India at the swearing in ceremony.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its partners won 212 seats in the member parliament while an 11-party alliance led by the Jamaat-e-Islami party, the country’s largest Islamist party, won 77 seats to be the opposition.
In Bangladesh, voters elect 300 members of parliament directly while the remaining 50 posts are reserved for women and distributed proportionately among the winning parties.
Rahman, 60, who returned to the country in December – after 17 years in self-exile in London and shortly before his mother’s death – has promised to work for democracy in Bangladesh, country of 170 million people.
An interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus oversaw the election, largely peaceful and widely acceptable by international observers.