BNP’s Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir elected as Bangladesh president after major political power shift
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "BNP’s Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir elected as Bangladesh president after major political power shift")
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) general secretary Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir speaks during an interview with AFP in Dhaka on August 21, 2024. Photograph: (AFP)
Lawmakers elected BNP leader Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir as Bangladesh’s 23rd president with 255 parliamentary votes. He defeated Oli Ahmed following the resignation of former president Mohammed Shahabuddin.
Bangladeshi lawmakers on Thursday (Aug 20) elected veteran Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir as the country’s new president, making the longtime opposition figure the head of state following a major political transition. Alamgir, 78, defeated Oli Ahmed, a retired army colonel and chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party, who contested the election as the candidate of the Jamaat-e-Islami-led 11-party opposition alliance.
Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin declared Alamgir the winner after he secured 255 votes against Ahmed’s 88 in the parliamentary election. The BNP returned to power in February, years after remaining in opposition and following the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government in August 2024. The party and its allies now hold a two-thirds majority in parliament after winning the February 12 general election, which brought BNP leader Tarique Rahman to the post of prime minister.
Although Bangladesh’s presidency is largely ceremonial, Alamgir will serve as head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Executive authority remains with the prime minister and cabinet. The presidential election was triggered by the resignation of Mohammed Shahabuddin last month on health grounds, before the completion of his five-year term. Shahabuddin, a former Awami League politician and close confidant of Hasina, was elected president in 2023 when the party was in power.
Hasina fled Bangladesh after a mass uprising ousted her government in August 2024 and has since been living in India. She has said she intends to return to Bangladesh in December this year. Alamgir is one of the BNP’s longest-serving leaders and served as the party’s secretary-general from 2016 until his nomination for the presidency. During Hasina’s rule, he emerged as one of the opposition’s most prominent voices and faced repeated arrests and several legal cases.
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