Hussain Muhammad Ershad

Hussain Muhammad Ershad (1930-2019) was a Bangladeshi army officer and politician who served as President of Bangladesh from 1983 to 1990 after taking power in a bloodless coup. Born in Rangpur in what was then British India, he was educated at Carmichael College and at the University of Dhaka, then commissioned into the Pakistan Army in 1952.

He was held in West Pakistan during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and joined the new Bangladesh Army on his repatriation in 1973. He rose to chief of army staff in 1978 under President Ziaur Rahman and, after Zia's assassination in 1981, took control of the country through a coup in March 1982.

He served first as Chief Martial Law Administrator and then as president from December 1983, founding the Jatiya Party as his political vehicle and winning a referendum and presidential election under conditions opposition parties rejected. His government oversaw administrative decentralisation, the declaration of Islam as the state religion in 1988, and growth in rural infrastructure, while drawing accusations of corruption and authoritarian rule.

A mass uprising in late 1990 forced him to resign in December of that year, and he spent six years in prison on corruption and arms charges before returning to electoral politics in the late 1990s. He served as a member of parliament for Rangpur, was Special Envoy to the Prime Minister with the rank of cabinet minister, and led his Jatiya Party until his death in Dhaka in July 2019.

The given name Hussain is an Arabic name, a diminutive of Hasan, meaning good or handsome. Used for boys across the Muslim world, it accompanied him through a long political career.