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Awami League desperately needs new leadership. It’s looking for it in wrong places

What Awami League needs now is not an answer to who will succeed Hasina or even a debate on whether Hasina should return to Bangladesh, but a new leadership on the ground.

The Bangladesh Awami League had a hard time during the Yunus administration, and troubles seem to be far from over for the party now that a newly elected government under Tarique Rahman is in place. Speaking at the 13th parliament’s maiden session on 12 March, Bangladesh’s new Prime Minister said that the ousted Awami League government had weakened parliament by failing to make it the centre of national activities.

On the same day, the government declared that certain national days previously observed, including the birth and death anniversaries of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family, will no longer be celebrated at the state level.

These are not encouraging developments for the party, whose political activities have remained banned in Bangladesh since 10 May 2025, and its supreme leader and former Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina. She has been in exile in India with much of her top leadership since August 2024.

There has been much talk, as well as media speculation, on who Hasina’s political successor would be.

The party should choose a leader from among those in the Awami League who are still inside Bangladesh and can revive the party on the ground by enthusing the cadres at such a difficult time.

Also read: BNP win in Bangladesh is a chance to reset Delhi-Dhaka ties—India is willing to forget the past

After Sheikh Hasina fled to India on 5 August 2024, followed by many of her top ministers and leaders, an unelected interim government took over the reins of the country. The leaders, workers and supporters who stayed back in Bangladesh faced the fury of the mob, as well as the full force of the law.

The arrests continued through the year. And in May 2025, Bangladesh press reported that the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, along with its Detective Branch, detained over 175 Awami League leaders and activists over the last month, including eight ex-lawmakers from the party.

On 17 November 2025, the three-member International Crimes Tribunal, led by Justice Golam Mortuza Mozumder, sentenced Sheikh Hasina to death........

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