A good riddance

Mohammad Shahabuddin’s improbable rise began in February 2023, when the ruling Awami League nominated the former judge and anti-corruption commissioner for the country’s highest ceremonial post. 

The choice raised eyebrows even within party ranks, where senior stalwarts felt sidelined. Shahabuddin did little to cultivate an aura of statesmanlike detachment. At an event in his home district of Pabna, he proudly touted his political roots as a former activist in the Awami League's student wing, the Chhatra League. 

Worse still in the eyes of critics was a notorious photograph—widely circulated on social media—showing him bowing to touch the feet of the [ousted] Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. To his defenders, it was a traditional sign of personal respect; to his detractors, it was a devastating metaphor for a presidency that would remain thoroughly subservient to the executive branch. 

Minor embarrassments, including a viral screenshot of a flattering social media comment allegedly left on a TV presenter's page, only reinforced an impression of a chief executive lacking gravitas.

When the Awami League engineered the deeply flawed, largely boycotted parliamentary election of January 2024, Shahabuddin dutifully swore in Sheikh Hasina once again. Yet the political structure he was chosen to preserve crumbled spectacularly just seven months later. 

In August 2024, a massive, student-led uprising forced Hasina to flee the country after weeks of lethal street violence. Suddenly, the partisan appointee found himself presiding over the formal liquidation of the regime that made him. 

On August 8, Shahabuddin administered the oath of office to Dr Muhammad Yunus and the interim administration. For a brief moment, the head of state seemed to facilitate a critical constitutional transition smoothly enough.

The peace did not last. In October 2024, Shahabuddin threw Bangladesh into a fresh constitutional crisis during an interview with a senior journalist. He casually remarked that he had never actually received Sheikh Hasina’s formal resignation letter prior to her escape to India, suggesting she was never given time to sign one. 

The statement contradicted earlier public declarations by the army chief and set off a firestorm. To the student movement and anti-autocracy activists, the president’s comments were seen as a covert attempt to delegitimize the new order and throw the uprising's legal standing into doubt.

The backlash was swift and fierce. Furious student protesters marched on the presidential palace, Bangabhaban, besieging its gates and demanding his immediate removal. It was an unprecedented spectacle in Bangladeshi politics: a sitting president cornered inside his own residence by the very citizens who had overthrown his political patron. 

Advisors in the interim government scrambled to contain the damage, urging the public to ignore semantic debates over paper trails and focus on structural reform. Yet legally replacing him was a nightmare. 

Bangladesh’s constitution stipulates that a president can only be impeached by a sitting parliament—an institution that did not exist during the interregnum. Lacking a legal mechanism to oust him without creating a dangerous constitutional vacuum, the government allowed Shahabuddin to cling to his post, a hollow figurehead effectively under siege.

Even after the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) won the general election in February 2026 and restored parliamentary governance, the president’s position remained intact, for the time. 

Prime Minister Tarique Rahman took the oath of office from Shahabuddin, but during subsequent parliamentary sessions, opposition lawmakers routinely weaponized the president's past record during debates, culminating in dramatic walkouts.

Ironically, the possible final blow to his already battered reputation came not from domestic parliamentarians, but from abroad. While undergoing medical treatment in London, reports surfaced that Shahabuddin had engaged in a private telephone conversation with the exiled Sheikh Hasina. 

For a government trying to dismantle the remnants of a seventeen-year dictatorship and establish democratic stability, a president secretly maintaining lines of communication with the fallen autocrat was a bridge too far. 

The political pressure became overwhelming, leaving him with no viable option but to offer his official retreat under the convenient umbrella of medical necessity.

Most Bangladeshi presidents have managed to navigate their terms by remaining within strict constitutional boundaries, acting as quiet guardians of national unity. Shahabuddin’s tenure proved to be the absolute inverse. 

From his sycophantic beginnings to his clumsily timed constitutional interventions, he repeatedly compromised the neutrality of his office. 

His resignation ultimately cleanses the state of a lingering anomaly—a partisan ghost from the ancient regime who outlived the system that created him, leaving behind a presidency that served as a cautionary tale of what happens when constitutional neutrality is traded for partisan convenience.

—