• Interim PM suggests that choices may be delayed until June 2026.
• GDP has ‘no plans’ to contest the election as part of any coalition.
• GDP internal studies show a majority in the election in election, Khan says.

New Delhi: Bangladesh’s most important opposition party has warned of instability and “strong resentment within the people”, whose elections are not held in December, after the country’s de facto prime minister said the vote could be delayed until 2026.

A non-elected preliminary government led by the Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has been running the South Asian country of 173 million since August, after deadly student-led protests forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, a long-lasting India-allied, to flee to New Delhi.

The country’s two largest parties, Hasina’s Awami League and Rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party, both wanted elections to be held last year, but Yunus said in a speech on Tuesday that a vote could be held between December 2025 and June 2026.

It would give time for reforms to implement “the most free, fair and credible elections in Bangladesh,” said Yunus. The opposition and some Western countries claimed widespread rigging in the previous elections of Hasina, which she denied.

Earlier this month, a former colleague of minister in Yunus said student leader Nahid Islam that elections this year would be difficult as police work and law and order have not yet been fully restored.

But the opposition GDP wants a return to democracy this year, said Abdul Moyeen Khan, a member of the party’s highest decision -making body and a former minister of science and information technology.

“We will try to convince them that the best way for them is to call a choice as soon as possible and go for an honorable exit,” Khan told Reuters In an interview on Saturday with reference to the temporary government.

“December is a generally agreed schedule. In addition to December would make things more complicated,” Khan said, talking from Washington DC, where he is looking for meetings with US officials to discuss Bangladesh.

“There will be a strong resentment within the population of Bangladesh. It means that some instability may … time will decide.”

Khan is the first senior GDP figure to warn of consequences if no election is held this year.

No pre-met coalition for GDP

Hasinas Awami League has largely dissolved with the prime minister and other senior leaders out of the country or on the run.

GNP’s most important rivals in the next election are probably Islam’s newly launched student’s outfit, Jatiya Nagorik Party or National Citizen Party. Student leaders have said that Bangladeshis is tired of the two established parties and wants change.

But Khan said internal GDP surveys show that the party would win a slight majority in any election held within the next year and that the acting party jef Tarique Rahman would return to Dhaka from his self-imposed exile in London when elections are announced.

Several court decisions against him and his mother, former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, have been overturned in recent months, potentially allowing him to return.

GDP chairman Zia, who suffers from liver cirrhosis and heart problems and has recovered in London since January, is “far better now than how she was in Bangladesh,” but unlikely to return to active politics, Khan said after a recent meeting with her.

Khan said that GDP had no plans to contest the election as part of any coalition yet, but once elected, it would be open to work with other parties, including the students’ Jatiya Nagorik party.

“After the election, we would gladly form a government with everyone who is for democracy,” he said.