Dhaka – Senior politician Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir was sworn in as the 23rd President of Bangladesh on Friday, a day after he won a landslide victory in parliament in the country’s first contested presidential election in 35 years.
Acting Speaker of Parliament Kaysar Kamal administered the oath at an evening ceremony held at the Bangabhaban presidential palace in Dhaka. The event was attended by politicians, civil society members, diplomats, and senior civil and military officials.
Alamgir, 78, was serving as secretary general of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and held the portfolio of minister for local government, rural development, and cooperatives in Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s cabinet until his election as president.
He will now hold the largely ceremonial position for a five-year term.
In the presidential race, Alamgir secured 255 votes, while his opponent Oli Ahmed, nominated by the opposition Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami-led alliance, bagged only 88 votes.
Only Members of Parliament are eligible to vote in the presidential election in Bangladesh. This time, there were 349 voters, as one lawmaker’s seat remained tied up in a legal dispute. Bangladesh’s Parliament, known as the Jatiya Sangsad, comprises 350 members, including 50 seats reserved for women. Six lawmakers did not turn up for casting their votes.
Since the reintroduction of the parliamentary system, the only previous vote for president took place in 1991, when both the BNP and the Awami League fielded candidates. In the seven subsequent elections, each had a single candidate and was held unopposed.
The Election Commission called the presidential poll earlier this month after the immediate past president, Muhammad Shahbuddin, resigned on health grounds on July 24, midway through his term.
Shahbuddin had been elected in April 2023 during the tenure of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who has been in exile in India since her ouster in August 2024 following a mass uprising.
Prime Minister Tarique Rahman took office earlier this year after his BNP won a more than two-thirds majority in the February general election, which was overseen by an interim administration headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.
Yunus had taken over as head of the interim government in the aftermath of Hasina’s ouster. Hasina’s party was banned from contesting the last election.
