Bangladesh: Mr. Shahabuddin Chuppu, a retired judge, has been sworn in as the 22nd president of Bangladesh, succeeding Mr. Abdul Hamid and serving a five-year term. Parliamentary Speaker Ms. Shirin Sharmin Choudhury administered the oath of office to Mr. Chuppu at the Bangabhaban presidential palace in Dhaka.

Mr. Chuppu, the candidate of the ruling Awami League (AL) party, was elected unopposed on February 13 since no other candidate submitted papers to compete in the race. The AL party has the majority in the 350-seat national parliament, with 302 members, and no other party has the numbers to nominate a presidential candidate.

After taking the oath, the new president received congratulations from the outgoing president, Mr. Hamid, who is the only person in Bangladesh to have held the presidential post for ten years in two consecutive terms. According to the country’s constitution, the presidential election must be held 60 to 90 days before the expiration of each five-year term.

Mr. Chuppu was born in 1949 in the northern Bangladeshi town of Pabna, and he retired as a judge in 2006. The AL leader was a freedom fighter in the country’s 1971 independence war and later served as a commissioner of the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission from 2011 to 2016.

The new president is a retired district judge and a member of the Awami League Advisory Council, which includes senior party leaders and technocrats.

Furthermore, Mr. Chuppu was a leader of the Awami League’s youth wings in his early life, took part in the 1971 Liberation War, and was imprisoned following the 1975 assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of Prime Minister Hasina. In 1982, he was inducted into the country’s judicial service.

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