On Monday, August 5, 2024, Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled as ongoing nationwide protests took a violent turn. Hundreds of protesters stormed her official residence, waving flags and raising slogans against her, shortly after she fled.
After resigning as Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina left Bangladesh and arrived at the Hindon Air Base near Delhi. She is expected to fly to London, reports said.
Due to the unrest in Bangladesh, the BSF has issued a high alert along the India-Bangladesh border. As a result, both passenger and freight train services heading towards the border areas have been suspended.
General Waker-Uz-Zaman, the army chief of Bangladesh, announced that an interim government would assume control. He assured that the military would step back and commit to initiating an investigation into the fatal crackdown on student protesters.
“We will investigate all the killings and punish the responsible,” he said at a press conference. “I have ordered that no army and police will indulge in any kind of firing… Now, the students must stay calm and help us.”
‘Liberals’ and ‘journalists’ use Bangladesh chaos to instigate similar kind of deadly protests in India
However, soon after the ouster of Hasina, a democratically elected head of state in India’s immediate neighbourhood, the left-leaning ‘liberals’ and propagandists who identify themselves as ‘journalists’ fell over themselves to spread canards of ‘rigged election’ in Bangladesh—a shameless attempt to instigate violence in India and rationalise the violent protests led by Islamists in Bangladesh.
“Sheikh Hasina reportedly rigged an election and hence this tragic unravelling in #Bangladesh is happening. There’s a message in here for all democracies and institutions meant to guard people’s mandate. Jai Hind,” Saba Naqvi, the self-proclaimed flagbearer of democracy and secularism who had once mocked Shivling, tweeted following the turn of events that transpired in Bangladesh earlier today.
Naqvi suggested that democratic institutions in India might have been compromised, a popular leftwing trope used to discredit the democratic mandate received by the Modi government.
The founder of the far-left leftwing portal The Wire, Siddharth Varadarajan, also appeared to peddle a similar propaganda trope that ‘rigged elections’ in Bangladesh are the cause of the events we are witnessing today.
Another left-leaning ‘liberal’, Vinod Kapri, also furthered the same narrative that Sheikh Hasina undermined the democratic principles.
बांग्लादेश की आज़ादी के जनक #SheikhMujiburRahman की प्रतिमा के साथ ये सुलूक बांग्लादेश के इतिहास की सबसे तकलीफ़देह तस्वीर है
— Vinod Kapri (@vinodkapri) August 5, 2024
काश.. #SheikhHasina ने अपने पिता के लोकतांत्रिक मूल्यों की रक्षा की होती
काश..#SheikhHasina ने अपार जनसमर्थन का मान रखा होता
pic.twitter.com/OjXHrrgAOO
Rana Ayyub claimed “hubris” has been the undoing of Sheikh Hasina, a democratically elected leader in Bangladesh.
“The End of a Dictator,” tweeted RJ Sayema, infamous for peddling fake news, lying, and endorsing Hinduphobia among other things.
The End of a Dictator.#SheikhHasina
— Sayema (@_sayema) August 5, 2024
How liberals are pushing ‘rigged elections’ lie to rationalise deadly protests in Bangladesh and seek a similar predicament in India
Earlier this year, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina won the re-election for a fifth term in the national election that was conducted on Sunday amidst the boycott by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) led by former PM Khaleda Zia.
Sheikh Hasina’s party Awami League won a fourth consecutive term in the 12th parliamentary election that took place in January 2024, marking the second lowest voter turnout since the reinstatement of democracy in 1991.
Sheikh Hasina was elected as the Bangladesh PM for the fifth term after the principal opposition BNP, linked to the terror outfit Al Qaeda, decided to boycott the elections as the Prime Minister cracked the whip on jihadis and extremist elements threatened to destabilise the country, a glimpse of which the world saw today as scores of protesters, reportedly instigated by BNP leaders, rampaged through the PM’s official residence, ransacked the palace and stole sarees, utensils and other belongings. Hours later, hundreds of hoodlums scaled the Bangladeshi parliament as shocking visuals of protesters smoking in the building and vandalising it.
In fact, foreign observers from the US, Canada, Russia, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and the Arab Parliament had described the general elections in Bangladesh as free, fair, and peaceful. They commended the election process, with one observer noting that the caretaker government system, which led to the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) boycotting the polls, was undemocratic.
The government had invited numerous foreign observers from India and other countries, as well as multilateral organisations, to monitor the elections amid the opposition boycott.
Shaoquett Moselmane, an Australian observer, remarked, “It’s been a very fair and free process for people walking in. There’s a lot of good security and a very transparent process.” Jim Bates, a former US Congressman, was quoted by the state-run BSS news agency as saying, “I found the election to be very peaceful, free, and fair.”
Despite validation from foreign observers, the Indian ‘liberals’ and ‘journalists’ continue to push the false bogey of a ‘rigged election’ and rationalise the protests sweeping Bangladesh as a fallout of Hasina’s “authoritarian grip” on the country as a means to pursue domestic objectives, which include among other things fomenting trouble in India and instigating public to come out on streets and oppose the democratically elected government at the Centre.
The left ecosystem has already offered itself as an ally for the opposition to push its divisive ideas like the caste census, which has the potential to spark further divisions and create new faultlines. Several so-called journalists and opinion-makers, who ridiculed those who asked uncomfortable questions of the opposition parties as ‘Bhakts’ and ‘Godi media’, have no qualms in deifying opposition leaders and hailing them, even for their irrational behaviour.
This clique of leftists and ‘journalists’ seems to be hoping for a situation similar to Bangladesh to arise in India, aiming to remove their long-time adversary, Modi, from the office of Prime Minister, a goal they’ve pursued ever since he rosed to power in 2014. If it involves inciting the masses to engage in violence, vandalism, looting, and arson, so be it. The foremost motive of removing PM Modi should be achieved, even if it means throwing the country into chaos.
