Hussain Muhammad Ershad

Hussain Muhammad Ershad (হুসেইন মুহাম্মদ এরশাদ, ; 1 February 1930 – 14 July 2019) was a Bangladeshi military officer and politician who served as the president of Bangladesh from 1983 to 1990, heading a military dictatorship.

Ershad was born in 1930 at Dinhata in Cooch Behar Princely State, British India (now in Cooch Behar district, India) to Mokbul Hossain and Mazida Khatun, in a Bengali-speaking Nashya Shaikh family.

Mokbul was a lawyer who served as a minister of the then Maharaja of Cooch Behar and was the son of Wakil Saadatullah.

Ershad was the eldest of nine siblings including GM Quader, Mozammel Hossain Lalu and Merina Rahman.

His parents migrated from Dinhata to East Bengal in 1948 after the Partition of India.

Ershad studied in Carmichael College in Rangpur.

He later graduated from the University of Dhaka in 1950.

Ershad was commissioned into the Pakistan Army in 1952 from officers training school in Kohat.

He was an adjutant in the East Bengal Regimental Centre, the regimental training depot in Chittagong.

He completed advanced courses from the Command and Staff College in Quetta in 1966.

After serving with a brigade in Sialkot, he was given command of the 3rd East Bengal Regiment in 1969 and the 7th East Bengal Regiment in 1971.

From the beginning of the Bangladesh Liberation War, Ershad was interned along with other Bengali officers stationed in West Pakistan and held as a prisoner of war.

In 1973 he and the others were repatriated to the new nation of Bangladesh in accordance with the Simla Agreement between India's Indira Gandhi and Pakistan's Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

After his return, Ershad was appointed Adjutant General of the Bangladesh Army by President of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the first president of independent Bangladesh.

The different experiences during the war of the professional and paramilitary officers and soldiers in Bangladesh, together with the country's diverse cultures and Muslim majority, created instabilities in the years after independence.

The members of the army who had been imprisoned or otherwise out of the country during the liberation war later tended to form different political alliances than those who had participated in the war.

This long influenced the instability of national politics and the armed forces.

Ershad was sent for advanced military courses to the National Defence University (NDU), India.

On 15 August 1975, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated.

Although Maj. Gen. Ziaur Rahman was arrested in a counter-coup on 3 November 1975, he was restored to power in a coup led by Lt. Colonel Abu Taher on 7 November 1975.

The Chief Justice of Bangladesh, Abu Sadat Mohammad Sayem, succeeded to the presidency on 7 November 1975 during martial law.

At that time, Zia Rahman was appointed as the Deputy Chief Martial Law Administrator.

General Ziaur Rahman was appointed Army Chief by President of Bangladesh Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad.

Rahman appointed Ershad as the Deputy Chief of Army Staff in 1975.

Ziaur Rahman assumed the presidency after legalising the military coups.

He revived the multi-party system through the Fifth Amendment of the Bangladesh Constitution.

He appointed Ershad as the new Chief of Army Staff, promoting him to the rank of lieutenant general.

Viewed as a professional officer and having a talent for Bengali speech writing, Ershad soon became the closest politico-military counsellor of Ziaur Rahman.

After the assassination of Ziaur Rahman on 30 May 1981, Ershad remained loyal to the government.

He ordered the army to suppress the coup attempt by Major General Abul Manzoor.

He seized power as head of the army during a bloodless coup against President Abdus Sattar on 24 March 1982 (by imposing martial law and suspending the Constitution).

Ershad maintained loyalty to the new president Abdus Sattar, who had led the BNP to victory in elections in 1982.

He declared himself President in 1983, and subsequently won the controversial 1986 Bangladeshi presidential election.

Despite claims to have legitimately won the 1986 election, many consider his regime as an era of military dictatorship.

Ershad founded the Jatiya Party in 1986 and became a Member of Parliament for that party in the constituency of Rangpur-3 in 1991, with successful re-election in all subsequent general elections.

He was the longest serving male head of government in Bangladeshi history.

During his tenure Ershad pursued devolution reforms, privatization of nationalised industries; the expansion of the national highway system; and the founding of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation; he committed his nation's forces as an ally to the United States in the Gulf War.

He contributed to developments in infrastructure and socio-economic growth, divesting key nationalised industries.

In 1989, Ershad pushed parliament to make Islam the state religion, in a sharp departure from Bangladesh's original secular constitution.

Ershad served in the Presidential office until 1990, when he was forced to resign following a popular pro-democracy mass uprising led by Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina.