If Tarique wishes to retain his slim majority in his adoptive constituency, he may wish to reconsider the inconvenience he is causing to the voters there as a result of his choice of residence.
When you fund the arts, you also fund scholarships. When you fund scholarship, you fund wisdom, empathy, and acceptance.
Whether it is extortion committed by his partymen, or high-handed action taken by his law enforcement officers, or policy blunders committed by his cabinet, or even something as seemingly minor as the traffic nightmare that surrounds his residence, the buck stops with the PM.
If Amar Desh, a newspaper representing the right, believes that it is appropriate to make a lead story out of men and women arrested at a party even before its ideological allies have acquired real power, then we can form some idea of what people who share Amar Desh's values might do if they actually gained power.
Tarique Rahman has the goodwill, the mandate, and the time to do this differently. The most durable thing he can build in his first term is a caretaker system both the government and the opposition can claim to have shaped, and thus will be owned by both.
What Tarique Rahman’s UNGA address says about Bangladesh’s emerging role in the Global South
A serious opposition does not merely show that something is broken. It identifies who is responsible, produces evidence, demands a remedy, and keeps the issue alive after the cameras leave. That is harder than shouting. It is also politics.
A genuine win-win partnership should create employment for Bangladeshis, strengthen Bangladeshi enterprises and build local capacity while providing Chinese businesses with opportunities in a growing market.
Bangladesh does not need to choose between religion and secularism. It must choose between a democratic political system, where diverse beliefs co-exist under shared constitutional rules, and a politics where identity is weaponized to determine belonging.
By choosing Mirza Alamgir, the Prime Minister has placed institutional credibility above other considerations, and in doing so has strengthened the constitutional order his government is charged with restoring.
Dhaka has deepened military ties with Turkey while normalizing relations with Pakistan. This commitment towards strategic autonomy unsettles security planners in New Delhi, who view the accumulation of these moves as a potential erosion of Indian influence in the Bay of Bengal.
As Hasina professes a desire to return to Dhaka, then both governments should commit to taking steps to allow her to do so. Not as a returning prodigal daughter, but as a fugitive accused and convicted of crimes against humanity.
The demand that drove millions into the streets was never abstract. It was the return of democracy and fair elections to Bangladesh, the right of its people to choose their own government, and through that, make the decisions that would govern their destiny.
This is not a government choosing China over India, or East Asia over the West. Rather, Dhaka is trying to keep every door open for as long as the money keeps coming in and as long as no single lender or ally claims it exclusively.
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.
In one simple way, Tarique Rahman stands to be more successful than either of his parents. Neither of them could successfully, peacefully, finish their term and hand over power to the next government. Ziaur Rahman was gunned down by rogue officers. Khaleda Zia faced an implacable foe who made good on her promise of not allowing the former prime minister a moment of peace.
