Sheikh Hasina daughter, candidate for WHO election, puts India in dilemma

Kolkata: Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is likely to be accompanied by her daughter Saima Wazed during her trip to India to attend the G20 summit, officials of the neighbouring country said.

Hasina will be inaugurating a rail link with Tripura and the second unit of the Rampal power plant along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, virtually from Delhi at functions on the sideline of the G20 meet.

She will also sign several agreements including a deal which will facilitate a Rupee-Taka card for citizens of both countries to pay in local currency instead of in dollars while travelling to the other.

“Saima Wazed will be in Delhi during the G20 talks,” a top official of the Bangladesh foreign ministry confirmed.

The G20 summit which will be held in New Delhi over the coming weekend will be attended by most of the top leaders of the world.

This is possibly the first time Hasina’s daughter will be by her mother’s side during an official visit to close neighbour and ally India, and analysts believe this to be significant in many ways.

Wazed, an autism expert who is standing for election as regional director for South-East Asia Region (SEARO) at World Health Organization (WHO), will be looking for India, one of 11 countries in the region, to endorse her.

Wazed earlier this week accompanied Bangladesh President Mohammed Shahabuddin to the ASEAN summit in Indonesia. Her country’s top diplomats who accompanied the President are believed to have lobbied for her election among ASEAN countries.

India will have to choose between her and Nepal’s Shambhu Prasad Acharya for the WHO job. Given the importance that India attaches to its ties with both Bangladesh and Nepal, the choice is likely to be a tough one.

“A visit by Sheikh Hasina’s daughter to India at a global meeting is an interesting development. Besides her nomination for an international organisation, it bears watching if she will opt for a larger role in Bangladesh,” said Shantanu Mukherjee IPS (Retd), former National Security Advisor to Mauritius and a Bangladesh expert.

Sheikh Hasina has yet to indicate any potential successor to the leadership of Awami League, though her son Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed, or Joy Wazed as he is popularly known, was at one time seen by many as a potential candidate.

Wazed who has been an advisor to the WHO director general on Mental Health and Autism as well as a member of WHO expert advisory panel on Mental Health, has till now shown no inclination to enter politics.

Bangladesh is headed for a general election in the coming winter months where the ruling Awami League will be looking to win for an unprecedented fourth time.

However, the principal opposition party, BNP led by former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia, which has earlier accused the Hasina government of vote rigging, has said it will boycott the elections unless Hasina steps down and allows a caretaker government to conduct the elections, a demand unlikely to be conceded by the Awami League-led government.

While the US has some four months back announced a policy which reserves the right to deny visas to individuals including officials and politicians involved in hindering free and fair elections in the country, many other countries seem to be endorsing Hasina’s leadership of a buoyant Bangladesh which is now being seen as a rising economic star in Asia.

French President Emanuel Macron will be visiting Bangladesh right after the G20 summit in Delhi, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited Dhaka ahead of the summit.