Exiled Bangladeshi lawmaker and cricketer Shakib Al Hasan was allowed to remain with the Pakistan national team on Wednesday by the de facto leaders who toppled his old boss. Shakib, a former Bangladesh captain, took office as a lawmaker for the Awami League party of ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina in January in elections that were held without any serious opposition. He lost that job last week when parliament was dissolved after Hasina abruptly resigned and fled to India by helicopter in a dramatic conclusion to a student-led national uprising. One of those student leaders, 26-year-old Asif Mahmud, is now the de facto sports minister in an interim government and gave Shakib permission to remain with the team despite his ties to Hasina and the Awami League.
“We have presented the team to the sports advisor,” Iftekhar Ahmed, managing director of the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), told AFP.
“He did not oppose Shakib's inclusion. He said the team should be selected on merit.”
Mahmud was one of the leading members of Students Against Discrimination, a protest group that organised the demonstrations to oust Hasina.
He and fellow student leader Nahid Islam are both members of the advisory cabinet led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, which took office after Hasina fled.
Shakib, 37, was spotted by AFP training at the Gaddafi Cricket Stadium in Lahore on Wednesday.
He had not been seen since Hasina's sacking and joined the Bangladeshi squad in Pakistan straight from Canada, where he was playing in a Twenty20 competition.
'Should have come home'
Shakib is normally an active Facebook user, but has not posted publicly since July 14, two days before a deadly police crackdown on protests began.
“As a lawmaker, Shakib cannot avoid responsibility for mass killings,” former BCB board member Rafiqul Islam, who served before Hasina took office, told AFP.
“When students were being murdered, he never protested. Many of these students saw him as an icon. He should have been the first to come home and explain why he was silent.”
Rafiqul took part in a protest outside the BCB headquarters at Bangladesh's main cricket stadium, the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium, on Tuesday.
He and other sports administrators demanded the resignation of cricket board members whom they accused of being Hasina loyalists.
“Mismanagement, autocratic behaviour and rampant corruption are causing Bangladesh to lag behind in world cricket,” the group said in a statement on Monday.
Since Hasina fled on August 5, her party offices have been ransacked and set on fire, and many members of her Awami League have gone into hiding, fearing violence.
Bangladesh's courts, central bank and other government institutions have been purged of Hasina supporters since Yunus's caretaker government came to power.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is published via a syndicated feed.)
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