THE deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina has left the country after she resigned. The parliament has been dissolved. The president is now in full charge. But, no interim government has yet been installed to look after the affairs of the state. And, this has left the country with a constitutional and political void, which is not good for any modern-day state. Immediately after the departure of the prime minister deposed on August 5 through a democratically oriented student and mass movement, the army chief General Waker-uz-Zaman assured people of stability, political and otherwise, by way of which most of the people felt relieved and left the streets that they had overwhelmingly crowded in celebrations of the overthrow of the authoritarian government of the Awami League, which had governed the country for consecutive tenures since 2009. The mass uprising reached its climax after students, banded together as the Students against Discrimination, had held protests for the month of July. The protests entered a violent phase after the Awami League鈥檚 fronts and various law enforcement units had attacked the students and ordinary people and fired into them, leaving more than 200 dead in July and about a hundred on August 4. Several thousand people, including students, have also been wounded.
In such a precarious situation, violence broke out in parts of the country and vandalism and attacks on people, including the League people and religious minorities, started making the headlines despite calls of the army chief and the president on August 5 for people to refrain from such a frenzied situation. The violence that took place after the overthrow of Hasina鈥檚 government has left many dead, many more wounded and a number of establishments plundered, damaged or destroyed, creating a fearful situation for many in some areas. Yet, there have been no visible efforts on part of the authorities to keep law and order. The roads have, even, remained without police personnel to manage traffic. There has been almost no noticeable presence of the law enforcers. If the issue cannot be immediately attended to, such a situation might pave the way for an anarchic situation and people, who started settling down after the celebrations of the Awami League鈥檚 overthrow, might plunge into distress. We believe that the authorities concerned should immediately attend to the problem of law and order at hand. An interim government should also be installed immediately to attend to other political vacuums that have gripped the country after the resignation of the now-deposed prime minister, obviously by taking care of the legality involved.
The authorities that are running the affairs of the state have other tasks 鈥� short-, mid- and long-run, such as bringing about major democratic reforms in the political and economic systems of the country 鈥� in hand, but they must first install the interim government as early as possible and attend to law and order to ensure the safety and security of the people. A further delay in the installation of the interim government would ultimately prove detrimental to national interests, political and economic.