Three Jatiya Party leaders, two Awami League leaders and Workers chief
have been sworn in as ministers in the polls-time interim cabinet
headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Two Jatiya Party leaders have
taken oath as ministers of state.
The ministers in the new cabinet are Awami League’s Tofail Ahmed and
Mohammed Amir Hussain Amu, Jatiya Party’s Rowshan Ershad, Anisul Islam
Mahmud and Ruhul Amin Hawlader and Workers Party’s Rashed Khan Menon.
The state ministers are Mujibul Haque Chunnu and Salma Islam.
President Md Abdul Hamid administered the oath to ministers at the
Bangabhaban’s Darbar Hall on Monday.
Prime Minister and Awami League President Sheikh Hasina and Jaitya
Party Chairman HM Ershad were present during the oath-taking ceremony.
Among those who secured cabinet berth from the Jatiya Party, Ershad’s
wife Rowshan, Anisul and Chunnu are the party’s presidium member.
It was not yet clear who among the 31 existing ministers and 19 state
ministers would be included in the interim cabinet. Cabinet Secretary
Muhammad Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan conducted the oath administering
ceremony.
The Prime Minister later exchanged pleasantries with the new cabinet members.
Political leaders joined the ceremony held at the Darbar Hall of the
Bangabhaban.
Salma, who is the Editor and Publisher of the Daily Jugantor, a
Bengali newspaper owned by her husband, was in her designated seat for
a while before the swearing-in started.
Eight new faces: Senior Awami League leaders Tofail and Amu, both
members of the Awami league advisory council, were kept out of the
regular cabinet for the last five years.
They were ministers in the 1996-2001 Sheikh Hasina cabinet but were
not included when she came back to power in 2009.
They had called for greater reforms and more ‘inner party democracy’
within the Awami League when the military-backed caretaker was in
power.
Both leaders faced huge criticism from supporters of Hasina and were
later left in the cold.
However, Tofail and Menon, chief of the Workers Party, a component of
the 14-Party Alliance, were offered cabinet berths last year, which
they refused.
Rowshan, once the first lady, was elected Member of Parliament in 1996
from Mymensingh, in 2001 from Gaibandha and in 2009 from Rangpur.
Anisul, a Jatiya Party lawmaker from Chittagong, was a foreign
minister during HM Ershad’s autocracy.
Ruhul is a lawmaker from Barisal, while Chunnu, a former state
minister for land, is a legislator from Kishoreganj, and Salma, the
editor and publisher of Jugantor newspaper, is from reserved seats for
women. – Agencies
