In an interview with Times of India, an Indian media outlet, former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy on Thursday said his mother would return to Bangladesh once the interim government decides to hold parliamentary elections.
Speaking on the day that an interim government led by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus took charge of Bangladesh, Joy told TOI, “I am sure the Awami League will take part in the election and we might even win. We have the largest supporter base in Bangladesh.”
Sheikh Hasina resigned and left the country along with her younger sister Sheikh Rehana on 5 August due to a mass uprising at the call of the students.
With this, the 15-and-a-half-year rule of Sheikh Hasina’s government ended.
Speaking to the Times of India, Joy said, “I never had any political ambition and was settled in the US. But the developments in Bangladesh in the past few days show that there is a leadership vacuum. I had to get active for the sake of the party and I am at the forefront now.”
“I will do whatever it takes to save the party and its workers. If there is a need for me to join politics, I will not refrain from that,” he insisted.
Sajeeb Wazed Joy, who was also an honorary ICT affairs advisor to her mother, the former prime minister, further said her mother would have retired from politics after the current term.
His statements came after Khaleda Zia was released from house arrest and her son Tarique Rahman, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s acting chairperson, is returning to Dhaka, says the TOI report.
According to the report, Joy claimed that his mother has no plan of seeking asylum in any country. He said, “For the time being, she is in India. She will go back to Bangladesh the moment the interim govt decides to hold an election in the country.”
He also expressed gratitude to Indian Prime Minister “Narendra Modi for saving my mother’s life at such short notice.”
Acknowledging that there were mistakes in taking decisions while running the government, Joy stressed there was a need for “introspection”.
“There definitely were mistakes. When you run a country, a lot of decisions are made every day. Awami League believes in introspection and we were ready for that. But we did not get a chance to do that this time. We never realised the situation would escalate so fast even after accepting their demands,” Joy said in the interview to Times of India.