Is a Second BNP Term in the Bag? Not So Fast.

Economist and Counterpoint Executive Editor Jyoti Rahman opened his latest article with a witty comparison.

Economists, he wrote, envy physicists because they aspire to predict events and validate their theories with mathematical precision. Political scientists and sociologists, meanwhile, envy economists because they lack the tools to quantify their interpretations and must often settle for qualitative narratives.

As a trained macroeconomist, Jyoti bhai surely knows how to use available data and observable variables to construct plausible forecasts of political outcomes. In his columns, since he combines analytical rigour with wit, his work rarely descends into the dry abstractions of academia. So, they are more persuasive than those of many professional commentators.

As a journalist, I sure can afford to remain outside this hierarchy of scholarly envy. Physicists, economists, political or scientists all produce models and frameworks that aspire to create durable value. Journalism, by contrast, often produces work whose shelf life barely exceeds a day. At best, yesterday’s newspaper serves a purpose akin to absorbing excess oil from a packet of telebhaja.

Yet, we, the journalists, possess this advantage of our own. We resemble the village barber-surgeon who performed minor operations without observing any medical protocol because he was blissfully unaware that such protocols existed. Our methods are often inelegant and our assumptions under-theorized. Nevertheless, by piecing together gossip and instinct, we frequently construct our own informal models of the future. Occasionally, they prove surprisingly accurate.

Bangladesh is notoriously difficult to predict, and the reason may lie partly in the geography on which the country rests. More than 180 million people inhabit the world's largest delta, a landscape shaped by constant erosion and renewal. I am unaware of any definitive anthropological study on the matter, but one suspects that generations of life on shifting riverbanks have produced what might be called a char dokholer manoshikota -- a mentality shaped by the perpetual contest for newly emerged land.

For centuries, rivers erased old property lines and created new fertile territory. Land appeared, disappeared and reappeared elsewhere. Ownership became fluid, and opportunity often belonged to whoever moved first. Add to this a flat and largely unprotected geography that has repeatedly invited invasion and abrupt political change, and one begins to understand why Bangladesh and Bangladeshis can be remarkably difficult to categorize, let alone forecast.

A conventional political reading of today's circumstances would provide ample evidence for a relatively straightforward conclusion that a BNP government led by Tarique Rahman is likely to complete a full five-year term and may even secure re-election. Jyoti bhai identifies many of the reasons.

Jamaat-e-Islami has little incentive to destabilize a government from which it benefits ‘politically’ (need another piece for proper explanations). The continued absence -- or constrained presence -- of the Awami League, still operating under severe restrictions, leaves the BNP confronting opponents that appear comparatively weak.

In electoral terms, the BNP currently resembles a heavyweight facing a ring full of lighter challengers. Jyoti bhai did not dwell on the National Citizen Party (NCP), perhaps because it has yet to establish itself as a major political force. Despite ‘energetic’ efforts to cultivate a distinct identity, it remains widely perceived as politically adjacent to Jamaat. Its graduation into Bangladesh's ‘big boys’ of political actors, if it occurs, will likely require a few more years at least.

Jyoti bhai’s assessment of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman is similarly persuasive. Unlike many contemporary politicians, Tarique Rahman has not embraced populism despite its effectiveness across democracies and autocracies alike. His speeches are often measured to the point of blandness (as Jyoti bhai pointed out). At public meetings and private consultations, he appears more inclined to listen than to dominate.

Those who have interacted with him frequently remark upon his attentiveness and his ability to connect with ordinary citizens on an individual level (also pointed out by Jyoti bhai).

Then again, after fifteen years of authoritarian rule and a seventeen-month interim administration frequently criticized as being governed by pressure from the ‘mobs’, the relative stability of the Tarique government’s first few months in office carries obvious appeal. Most citizens value predictability. Common sense also suggests that two revolutionary-scale upheavals within a decade would constitute an extraordinarily rare sequence of events -- much like two black swans dancing together.

Yet politics has a habit of punishing common sense.

The first problem lies in the nature of the system itself. The power structure over which Tarique Rahman now presides while promoting visions of a Notun (New) Bangladesh often bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the Puran (Old) Bangladesh it claims to replace. Even if one assumes sincerity in his reformist ambitions, he appears constrained by the very machinery that produced the status quo -- or, perhaps more accurately, by the status quo that produced the machinery.

Before confronting political opponents, Tarique may first have to overcome the entrenched instincts of his own political camp. A common perception, voiced not only by opponents but also by many observers sympathetic to the government, is that while the top leadership speaks of building a new Bangladesh, significant sections of the party apparatus remain focused on extracting rents from the old one.

This process begins far below the national stage. At the thana and upazila levels, local politicians seek influence over transfers and administrative appointments. Such interventions are often treated as legitimate rewards for electoral victory instead of corruption. Bangladesh's political system has long functioned through these patronage networks. Elections determine who controls them -- they rarely determine whether they exist.

There is also a more subtle challenge: Whether Tarique Rahman's personal style is itself politically sustainable. During Donald Trump's first presidency, Jared Kushner was frequently portrayed as the thoughtful counterweight to Trump's volatility. Because Kushner listened more than he spoke, many interpreted his silence as evidence of depth.

Talk show host John Oliver once punctured this perception with characteristic sharpness, observing that perhaps Kushner listened so much because he simply “had little to say.”

A similar narrative is emerging around Tarique Rahman. Social-media influencers -- many openly hostile to the government -- have worked relentlessly to portray him as intellectually lightweight and administratively incapable.

Several poorly judged and ill-informed statements on the part of the PM have helped reinforce this image. 

Moreover, the final years of Sheikh Hasina's rule fostered a peculiar political culture in which systemic failures were often attributed to everyone except the leader herself. That experience has left most citizens unwilling to grant the chief executive the benefit of the doubt, particularly when lower levels of government continue to exhibit familiar habits.

This is where I diverge slightly from Jyoti bhai’s framework and prediction. His argument is that the Tarique administration can endure despite what he describes as "a surfeit of shocks from abroad -- economic and geopolitical."

To be clear, I am not rejecting his conclusion. He himself acknowledges that if opposition forces “resolve their internal divisions, develop credible candidates and produce their own broadly appealing leadership, they could ride an anti-incumbency wave to victory in 2031.”

My disagreement concerns less the destination than the method of getting there.

Jyoti bhai approaches the future as an economist, identifying variables, assigning weights and constructing a model to predict the outcome. I approach it as a journalist, relying on moods and the often untidy signals emanating from the street -- and probably some words on the grapevine.

My sense is that public sentiment now remains too fluid to fit comfortably within conventional political models. The traditional variables still matter. Patron-client relationships remain pervasive. Organizational strength still counts. Yet Bangladesh possesses additional variables capable of overwhelming standard calculations.

Consider the ingredients already present.

There is a giant neighbour with little affection for the current administration and every incentive to view it skeptically.

There is an opposition movement that continues to possess the potent political resource of religious mobilization in an increasingly polarized regional environment.

There is an economy still searching for stable footing after years of disruption.

There is a ruling-party rank-and-file that often appears eager to replicate the rent-seeking habits once associated with the Awami League.

And there is a vast ecosystem of social-media influencers determined to discredit not only government failures but frequently its successes as well.

Then there is the NCP.

It lacks the burdens of incumbency, enjoys the advantages of political novelty and operates natively within a digital ecosystem that increasingly shapes public opinion. It is not yet a member of the political establishment, but that exclusion may itself be an asset.

Taken together, these forces create precisely the sort of environment in which forecasts become fragile.

They introduce volatility into a system that might otherwise appear predictable. They create pathways through which seemingly marginal developments can rapidly become consequential. That is why Bangladesh remains such a difficult country to model now.

It is a place where formal structures coexist with informal realities and where patronage networks operate alongside viral narratives. And it is a country where public moods can shift faster than institutions can respond.

Yes, economists may envy physicists and political scientists may envy economists. But, here, in a place as fluid and unpredictable as Bangladesh, there are moments when even the most elegant model benefits from being challenged by a journalist's imperfect, half-cooked antithesis.

Faisal Mahmud is the Managing Editor of Daily Waadaa.