Quoting some unnamed leaders of the Awami League, Indian newspaper The Indian Express reported on Thursday that four people, including son Sajeeb Wazed Joy, were responsible for the fall of long-standing prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s government.
‘She stopped listening to us,’ one of the leaders said as he blamed the inner circle of the Awami League, the coterie.
The Awami League leader called it ‘the Gang of Four’ — which he said had cut Hasina off from reality, the Indian daily said.
The three other leaders are Hasina’s adviser Salman Rahman, Awami League general secretary Obaidul Quader, and the home minister of her cabinet, Asaduzzaman Khan.
‘This Gang of Four led to her downfall. She had blind faith in these people, and lost the political instinct that she had in the past,’ said the unnamed AL leader.
The Awami League leader described Hasina’s indifference towards bringing the then opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party on board for the elections in January this year as her ‘major mistake’.
The Indian Express sources told the newspaper that some leaders of the Awami League were put in touch with exiled acting BNP chairman Tarique Rahman in London through intermediaries.
‘There was a proposal of a backchannel that we thought of establishing with Tarique in January 2023, a year before the elections in Bangladesh in January 2024… But Hasina did not give a green light to the proposal,’ a source said.
According to an Awami League leader, her refusal to engage with Tarique was a ‘blunder’ because getting BNP ready for elections — under a caretaker government — would have calmed the anger and grievances on the ground.
‘We could sense the anger among the people due to corruption, chandabaaji (extortion), police atrocities… and getting BNP on board for the elections would have taken that steam off. We could have still won and kept the party in power,’ the leader said.
Leaders and activists felt that Hasina, especially after winning the January 2024 elections, became much, more stubborn and would not pay heed to any advice.
‘She became overconfident after the fourth consecutive win, and failed to see the scale of anger when the quota reform protests broke out,’ the leader said.
Despite appeals from some of the leaders, who tactfully asked her to meet the student protesters in early July, she refused, sources said. The last nail in the coffin was when the Detective Branch picked up the student leaders in July and released them after intimidating them and extracting a commitment to withdraw the agitation.
The tactic backfired, and the students made it public how they had been forcibly asked to withdraw the agitation.
Over the past week, The Indian Express was able to meet a couple of them at undisclosed locations and speak to those in hiding, fearing retribution from opposition groups including the BNP and the Jamaat-e-Islami.
There’s a common refrain, ‘Hasina has abandoned the party and its people’.
‘Apa [elder sister] has abandoned us,’ an Awami League leader said, referring to Hasina.
This feeling of abandonment is shared by many of them, who did not foresee the events of August 5—the day when Hasina quit and, along with her sister Sheikh Rehana, fled the country. Her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, is in the US, while her daughter, Saima Wazed, is in India.
Her cabinet, even her closest aides, were taken by ‘complete surprise’ when she decided to leave, sources in the Awami League said. ‘We learnt about it from TV,’ a leader said.
