REUTERS, Dhaka

Jamaat-e-Islami is open to joining a unity government after February’s parliamentary vote, and has held talks with several parties, its chief told Reuters yesterday.

Opinion polls suggest that Jamaat-e-Islami, a once-banned Islamist party, will finish a close second to the BNP in the first election it has contested in nearly 17 years, as it marks a return to mainstream politics in the predominantly Muslim nation of 175 million.

Jamaat last held power between 2001 and 2006 as a junior coalition partner with the BNP and is open to working with it again.

“We want to see a stable nation for at least five years. If the parties come together, we’ll run the government together,” Jamaat Ameer Shafiqur Rahman said in an interview at his office in a residential area in Dhaka, days after the party created a buzz by securing a tie-up with a Gen-Z party.

Jamaat advocates Islamic governance under sharia law but has sought to broaden its appeal beyond its conservative base. Shafiqur said anti-corruption must be a shared agenda for any unity government.

The prime minister will come from the party winning the most seats in the February 12 election, he added. If Jamaat wins the most seats, the party will decide whether he himself would be a candidate, he said.

The party’s resurgence follows the ousting of long-time prime minister Sheikh Hasina in a youth-led uprising in August 2024. Hasina, whose Awami League party is now barred from the election, was a fierce critic of Jamaat, and during her tenure, several of its leaders were sentenced to death for alleged war crimes during the 1971 independence war with Pakistan, a war Jamaat opposed.

Jamaat had been banned from elections since 2013 after a court ruled its charter violated the country’s secular constitution. An interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus lifted all restrictions on the party in August 2024.

TIES WITH INDIA AND PAKISTAN

Shafiqur said Hasina’s continued stay in India after fleeing Dhaka

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