Banning the AL has led to a vacuum filled by the Jamaat-e-Islami, now the second largest party and arguably stronger and more hopeful than ever about transforming Bangladesh into an Islamic state.
One of the core reasons behind Bangladesh’s political malaise is blind partisan loyalty. The tendency to select candidates based on party identity, factional allegiance, religion, or gender -- rather than competence -- has repeatedly rendered parliament ineffective. The entire nation has paid the price.
Jamaat can only win if this is a wave election, signaling a tectonic shift in the national mood. There is little evidence of this in the polls and available data. It is possible, but not probable.
The question is not whether this election will solve all of Bangladesh’s problems, it will not. The real question is whether it can reopen a democratic pathway that has long been blocked.
Bangladesh’s citizens face a crucial choice: Will they allow the state to bypass constitutional limits, pressure institutions, and control the vote, or will they insist that the Constitution not the government remains the ultimate authority?
While turnout may not reach historic highs, it is nonetheless expected that up to 70% of voters will participate. Yet, as election day draws near, a palpable sense of anxiety and security concern has settled over the public.
The US has accidentally left a vacuum that Europe has been taking advantage of to establish itself as a geopolitical power. Europe does not have to remain hooked to the shackles of the dependency that was the Cold War, but now, it can move in its own direction and make new alliances and address what concerns it.
As Bangladesh enters into its first real general election since 2008, we will finally be given a snapshot of where the country stands electorally. Have the polls and the pundits called it correctly, or are we in for a February surprise? Only Election Day will tell.
We should treat the promise of this election with the respect it deserves. The students who gave their lives, the activists who risked everything, the ordinary citizens who stood up against tyranny, did not do so for narrow partisan advantage. They did so for Bangladesh.
India’s political field has bent under pressure but has not collapsed. Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s political field is far more fragile.
The crisis of politics is not its end, but its hollowing. The machinery we inherited was not designed to govern algorithmic power or planetary limits. Recognizing this is not defeatism but intellectual honesty.
The constitutional stakes are plain. The Bill of Rights protects speech, press, and the right “peaceably to assemble,” and it does not contain an immigration exception. International law says the same with sharper vocabulary.
There is a blueprint for restoration. It lies in the very veins of our land: the 20,000 kilometers of canals that define our geography. We can transform these waterways into a 36-gigawatt sovereign circuit.
Foreign observers will not, and cannot, answer the big questions. At best, they can marginally increase the reputational cost of blatant fraud. At worst, they offer political elites an easy scapegoat, deflecting public anger away from those who truly failed.
The lesson of recent first-past-the-post elections, from Britain to South Asia, is that victory belongs to the party that combines breadth with discipline. BNP has achieved the former. The task now is to execute the latter: Defend marginal constituencies, prioritize candidate quality, and treat every seat as winnable.
The NCP is still young. Its leaders are young. When it was launched, the response was electric; crowds gathered wherever it went. That energy is now waning. The atrophy has begun -- but it is not irreversible.
