Who could succeed Mirza Fakhrul in the three BNP and government posts?

Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Secretary General and Local Government Minister, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has been chosen as the party’s candidate for the presidential election.

BNP Chairman and Prime Minister, Tarique Rahman finalised his candidacy after a meeting with senior leaders this afternoon. Mirza Fakhrul’s nomination paper for the presidency will be submitted to the Election Commission today, Thursday.

The BNP has an absolute majority in parliament. As a result, it is almost certain that Mirza Fakhrul will become the country’s 23rd president. However, three positions inside the party and the government will fall vacant when he becomes president.

According to BNP and government sources, Mirza Fakhrul resigned today as the party’s secretary general and a member of its National Standing Committee. He will also step down as local government minister soon. If he is elected president, the Parliament Secretariat will declare his Thakurgaon-1 constituency vacant. A by-election will then be held there.

As Mirza Fakhrul’s prospects of becoming president become clearer, questions are increasingly being raised about who will succeed him as the party secretary general, one of the BNP’s most important organisational positions. He has held the post for nearly 16 years.

Mirza Fakhrul became the acting secretary general of BNP in 2011. He was formally appointed secretary general at the party’s national council in 2016. Over this long period, he emerged as one of the BNP’s top leaders.

In particular, he played a key leadership role throughout the period when the party’s top two leaders, Khaleda Zia and Tarique Rahman, were respectively imprisoned and in exile in London.

During the Awami League government’s tenure, Mirza Fakhrul was jailed six times. He led the party in the face of various forms of persecution and adversity under the previous government. He became known as an accepted and respected leader in politics.

Now that Mirza Fakhrul is likely to become president, the names of two leaders have been discussed within the party in recent days as possible successors. One is Standing Committee member and Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed. The other is Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi.

According to BNP insiders, the party may initially appoint an acting secretary general before or around the time of the national council. A final decision on the matter may then be taken at or around the national council.

Ruhul Kabir Rizvi did not contest the election and was not included in the cabinet. Therefore, some senior leaders believe he is more likely to be appointed acting secretary general if the post falls vacant.

Sources familiar with the matter said it is not yet clear whether a new person will be appointed to Mirza Fakhrul’s ministry after his resignation or whether someone from the existing cabinet will be given the responsibility.

The deadline for submitting nomination papers for the presidency is 4:00 pm today. The papers will then be scrutinised. The last day for withdrawing nominations is 18 August. If more than one candidate remains after the withdrawal deadline, the presidential election will be held on 20 August in the chamber of parliament.

BNP has already collected the nomination paper for the presidential election. Meanwhile, Mirza Fakhrul has signed an undertaking stating that he has no objection to being nominated as a presidential candidate. This is part of the legal process for the presidential election. His nomination paper may be submitted after a meeting at the Secretariat this afternoon.

Meanwhile, the 11-party alliance led by Jamaat-e-Islami has nominated Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Chairman Colonel (retd) Oli Ahmad as its presidential candidate. As a result, a presidential election involving a vote is set to take place after nearly 35 years.

According to the Constitution, the president is elected by votes cast by members of parliament. The BNP currently holds more than a two-thirds majority in the Jatiya Sangsad. Meanwhile, the opposition parties, including Jamaat, have 90 members, including reserved women’s seats.

As a result, the victory of the BNP-backed candidate in the vote is largely assured. In that case, it is almost certain that Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir will be elected the country’s 23rd president.

On 24 July, Md Sahabuddin, who had been elected president with the nomination of the Awami League, whose activities are now banned after it was ousted from power following the student-people uprising, resigned. Speaker Hafiz Uddin Ahmad is serving as acting president. Under the Constitution, a new president must be elected within 90 days of the office becoming vacant.

The Article 50(1) of the Constitution sets out the president’s term of office. It states, “The President shall hold office for a term of five years from the date on which he enters upon his office: Provided that notwithstanding the expiration of his term the President shall continue to hold office until his successor enters upon his office. No person shall hold office as President for more than two terms. The President may resign his office by writing under his hand addressed to the Speaker.”

The Constitution also states that during his term of office, the president is not eligible to be elected as a member of parliament. In other words, a person cannot remain an MP while serving as president or contest a parliamentary election during that period. If an MP is elected president, their parliamentary seat becomes vacant on the day they assume the office of president.

However, there is no direct provision stating that a minister’s position automatically ends upon being elected president. But once a minister assumes office as president, they can no longer remain a minister.

This is because Article 56(1) of the Constitution defines the offices of the prime minister, ministers, state ministers and deputy ministers as part of the government’s cabinet structure. Meanwhile, Article 48(2) states that the president is the head of state.

In the past, leaders including Abdur Rahman Biswas and Abdul Hamid were elected president from the positions of speaker or cabinet minister. They had resigned from their previous posts.