Hasina again asks Awami League to pick up a new chief

Leading the Awami League for around four decades, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has once again made her intentions clear to see the party leaders pick a new chief.

She asked the senior ruling party figures to think about it when they came to the Ganabhaban to greet her on 37 years of her homecoming on Thursday.

Hasina, the eldest daughter of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, returned home from exile in India on May 17, 1981 - around six years after the killings of most members of the family.

Earlier in February the same year, the Awami League elected her chief in its national council.

In the last party council two years ago, Hasina said she would be 'happy' to retire given the opportunity and if the Awami League does manage to find a new leader, but the party elected her chief again.

“It’s been 37 years…It probably would not be prudent to hold the office of president of a party for more than 37 years,” she said on Thursday.

“No, no!” the leaders of the Awami League, its affiliates and the professionals’ organisations backed by the party responded.

“You should think about a new leadership,” a smiling Hasina told them, only to get the same reaction.

The Awami League president also emphasised strengthening the party by forging greater unity to stand by the people.

Recalling the day of her return, the Awami League chief said, “I was made president of the party in the Awami League conference in 1981 without my knowledge.”

“I didn’t want to take charge of such a large party like the Awami Leage,” she added, referring to the politics she did when she was a student.

The prime minister remembered the victims of the Aug 15, 1975 massacre and said those who did not want to see Bangladesh as an independent country carried out the killings.

“Now I am working to make true the dreams of the father of the nation,” she said.

Referring to the attempts on her life, she said, “I’ve seen death up close. I don’t care about death.”