A long-time follower of Bangladesh politics and Sobhan musings on its curves and straight lines.
This isn’t just a normal switch in power. It’s a clear rejection of two parties that spent decades swapping control, making deals, and getting caught up in scandals while the country struggled.
Tarique Rahman can do what Sheikh Hasina would not: trust the Parliament he leads. Let it examine the Yunus era, line by line. Keep what works. Amend what can be saved. In that sequence, through that process, a course will emerge.
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.