Tarique Rahman was inaugurated as Bangladesh's new prime minister Tuesday following his party's decisive parliamentary election victory. The 60-year-old son of former leaders becomes the country's first male prime minister in 35 years after returning from 17 years of exile in London.
DHAKA, Bangladesh — Tarique Rahman officially assumed the role of Bangladesh’s prime minister on Tuesday following his political party’s commanding victory in recent parliamentary elections, marking the nation’s first vote since the major 2024 civil unrest that reshaped the country’s political direction.
The 60-year-old Rahman, whose leadership term spans the next five years, carries significant political lineage as the child of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and late President Ziaur Rahman. His inauguration breaks a 35-year streak of female leadership, as Bangladesh’s governance since its 1991 return to democratic rule had alternated between Rahman’s mother and her political opponent Sheikh Hasina.
President Mohammed Shahabuddin conducted the official swearing-in ceremony for Rahman on Tuesday, with numerous cabinet appointees and government officials also taking their oaths of office during the proceedings.
Electoral results showed Rahman’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party and allied groups capturing 212 positions in the 350-seat legislative body, while an opposition coalition of 11 parties headed by Jamaat-e-Islami, the nation’s primary Islamic political organization, secured 77 parliamentary seats.
Among the opposition alliance was the newly established National Citizen Party, created by student activists who spearheaded the 2024 demonstrations, which obtained six legislative positions.
Bangladesh’s electoral system allows citizens to directly choose 300 parliamentary representatives, with the remaining 50 positions designated for women and allocated based on each party’s electoral performance.
Rahman returned to Bangladesh in December after spending 17 years in voluntary exile in London, arriving shortly before his mother’s passing. He has pledged to champion democratic principles in the South Asian nation of 170 million residents.
The election process was supervised by an interim administration headed by Nobel Peace Prize recipient Muhammad Yunus, which assumed control after Hasina’s government fell. International election monitors characterized the voting as largely peaceful and legitimate.
Tuesday’s inauguration drew various international representatives, including Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu, Bhutan’s Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay, and delegations from India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and other regional nations.
Earlier Tuesday, election commission leader A.N.M. Nasir Uddin separately administered oaths to all newly elected parliamentary members.
The Bangladesh Awami League, Rahman’s primary opposition party previously led by Hasina, was prohibited from participating in the election following her removal during the 2024 mass protests. The Yunus administration had also suspended all party activities for Hasina’s organization, which had governed Bangladesh for a decade and a half.
Speaking from her refuge in India, where she has resided since August 5, 2024, Hasina criticized the electoral process as biased against her political movement, which maintains considerable influence. Domestically, she received a death sentence on crimes against humanity charges related to the hundreds of fatalities during the uprising.
Hasina has rejected these accusations and dismissed the court proceedings as a “kangaroo court.”