Dhaka, Feb 17 (.) After one and a half years of political instability, Bangladesh’s President Mohammed Shahabuddin swore in BNP chairman Tarique Rahman on Tuesday as the country’s new Prime Minister.
Following Rahman’s swearing-in, the new cabinet, including ministers and state ministers, took their oaths. Key leaders, including Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, Khalilur Rahman, Iqbal Hasan Mahmud Tuku, and Major Hafiz Uddin Ahmed, were among those sworn in.
Earlier in the day, BNP lawmakers elected in the 13th parliamentary elections took the oath as members of parliament. Rahman’s jumbo cabinet of 49 members, including 25 full ministers and 24 state ministers, was also sworn in after him.
Rahman, son of Late Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and military general-turned president Zia Ur Rahman, was catapulted to the position after the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its allies won a stunning victory at elections held last week, securing 212 seats out 297 which went to the polls, filling a vacuum left by the controversial banning of the Awami League.
President Mohammed Shahabuddin administered the oath of office to Rahman and members of his cabinet on this evening, in a ceremony which broke with past practice and was held under open skies at the South Plaza of the Bangladesh National Parliament.
The glittering ceremony marked the end of the interim government led by Chief Adviser Mohammed Yunus, which took charge post the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government, after a student-led revolt managed to unseat her government.
Rahman has become Bangladesh’s first elected male Prime Minister in 36 years, marking the party’s return to power after nearly two decades and a new chapter in a political landscape long dominated by two “Begums” – Sheikh Hasina and his mother, Khaleda Zia.
Among attendees were senior political leaders, diplomats, civil and military officials, and representatives from several countries, including China, India and Pakistan, including Speaker of the Lok Sabha Om Birla and Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri.
Rahman’s cabinet includes heavyweights such as Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, who ran the BNP during his absence; Khalilur Rahman, the interim government’s National Security Advisor; Amir Khoshru Mahmud Chowdhury, a former commerce minister in Khaleda Zia’s ministry; and Salahuddin Ahmed, a former telecom minister from Chittagong; as well a representative from the Hindu community Nitai Roy Chowdhury, and a first time woman MP Afroza Khanam Rita.
Rahman, 60, returned to Bangladesh in December after 17 years of self-imposed exile in London following his mother’s death. In his first remarks following the election, Rahman called for calm and restraint, saying “peace and law and order must be maintained at any cost”. He urged supporters to refrain from retaliation and warned that any form of chaos would not be tolerated.
Following the swearing-in of lawmakers, the chief election commissioner also administered the oath to members of the Constitution Reform Commission. There was a political tussle over the issue earlier in the day, with the Jamaat insisting it may boycott the swearing-in if parliament did not also agree to function as a constitutional reforms body, which would take forward the referendum held along with the election.
The February 12, 2026, constitutional referendum centres on the “July Charter,” a reform blueprint designed to overhaul the country’s governance following the 2024 uprising, which could give Bangladesh a bicameral legislature, bring in a caretaker government to conduct elections, and replace state principles like secularism.
Earlier in the day, Bangladesh’s Jamaat-e-Islami Nayeb-e-Ameer Abdullah Muhammad Taher had said his party would refrain from taking the oath as commission members if BNP lawmakers declined to do so. Taher had said the party viewed a parliament without constitutional reform as “meaningless.”
For many Bangladeshis, Rahman represents not only the possibility of change but the return of a system they remember too well. The middle class and women voters, mobilised in the absence of the Awami League, have placed a wager on stability over vendetta and voted for him, giving Rahman nearly half of the votes polled in a low voter turnout election.
Jamaat-e-Islami’s expanded voter base, which grew from 4.7 per cent in 2008 to an unprecedented 31.76 per cent in this year’s elections, remains a potential spoiler, a reminder that Bangladesh’s ideological fault lines are never far from the surface.
Right now, Rahman’s task will be to bring peace to a troubled land, satisfy neighbours irritated by unnecessary hostility shown by a previous regime and try and get trade deals through which will help revive a once-booming economy back into shape.
Team . JRC