Bangladesh Nationalist Party Chairperson Tarique Rahman shows victory sign during a meeting with media after his party won the national parliamentary election, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)
2026-02-17T10:19:54Z
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladesh’ s new prime minister was sworn in on Tuesday after his party’s landslide win in last week’s parliamentary elections, the country’s first since the massive 2024 uprising. The vote was billed as key to Bangladesh’s future political landscape after years of intense rivalry and disputed polls.
Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, whose term will last the next five years, is the son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and former President Ziaur Rahman. He is also Bangladesh’s first male prime minister in 35 years.
The country’s figurehead President Mohammed Shahabuddin administered the oath of office for Rahman. Dozens of Cabinet members and members of the new government were also being sworn in.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party and its partners won 212 seats in the 350-memebr Parliament while an 11-party alliance led by the Jamaat-e-Islami party, the country’s largest Islamist party, won 77 seats to be the opposition.
In Bangladesh, voters elect 300 members of Parliament directly while the remaining 50 posts are reserved for women and distributed proportionately among the winning parties.
Rahman, 60, who returned to the country in December — after 17 years in self-exile in London and shortly before his mother’s death — has promised to work for democracy in Bangladesh, country of of 170 million people.
An interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus oversaw the election, largely peaceful and widely acceptable by international observers.
Rahman’s main rival Bangladesh Awami League party headed by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina — who was ousted in the 2024 mass uprising — was banned from the race. The Yunus-led administration had also banned all activities of Hasina’s party, which had ruled the country for 15 years.
From her exile in India, where she has lived since Aug. 5, 2024, Hasina slammed the vote as unfair to her party, which still remains a major political force. At home, Hasina was sentenced to death on charges of crimes against humanity because of hundreds of deaths involving the uprising.
She denied the allegation and termed the court as a “kangaroo court.”
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