With the end of the year approaching, Bangladesh is now awash with tales or rumours or speculations about the election projected for February next year.
A bare two months before the voting takes place, if at all it takes place, it is quite natural that the mood of citizens will be focused on politics and particularly throughout December.
The Yunus regime remains fully aware of the need to fulfil its promise to hold an election in order for the country to get back on its democratic rails.
But then comes the crucial question: to what extent will the election be considered as an exercise without any taint attached to it?
In recent weeks, both at home and abroad, pressure has clearly been growing about the requirement of a free, fair, inclusive and therefore credible election.
That in essence has revived the place of the Awami League in the political sphere. With the recent visits to Delhi and Doha by Yunus’ national security advisor and his meetings with Indian, American and Qatari emissaries, the thought cannot be dismissed that Bangladesh’s future was at the core of the talks.
In other words, the shadow of the Awami League has begun to loom large over Bangladesh’s politics.
Does it then seem that an election that has no room for the former ruling party just might not be held, that indeed newer possibilities are being explored?
The Awami League apart, the position of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has also been under public scrutiny. In fact, the question about the BNP is simple and yet loaded: has the party shaped any policy on its electoral participation?
The failure so far of the party’s acting chairperson to return home from his long exile in Britain has been giving rise to all manner of stories related to his present, with particular reference to his past.
The rumour mills have been working overtime, with talk moving on to the pledges Tareque Rahman may have made before the last military-led caretaker regime (2007-2009) before he left the country.
Could those pledges, if they were at all made, have turned into a straitjacket for him?
The BNP would certainly like to return to power. It has been out of it since October 2006, which is a terribly long time for a political party to be in the woods.
But how prepared is it to take part in the election?
And how confident is it that it can win the vote and re-ascend to power?
Again, the Jamaat-e-Islami, its erstwhile junior partner in its days in government as well as opposition, has clearly moved miles ahead of it in terms of political consolidation.
At the public universities, in the banks and to a large extent in the civil administration the Jamaat is unquestionably in a comfortable position.
The BNP has clearly fallen behind. Besides, the Jamaat has given little hint of whether it wants an election at this point.
Its emphasis on elections being conducted on the basis of a proportional representation related to seats in parliament may not have attained any traction yet. But it remains part of Jamaat policy.
One goes back to the election question. How will a credible and inclusive election take place in the ongoing febrile atmosphere in the country?
The Awami League, which is yet to reoroganise itself effectively before it can reclaim its place in the political centre, would certainly not wish to go for an election organised by the Yunus regime. That position obviously has support among its adherents.
Move on to the next question: if the 35-40 per cent of voters who generally have voted for the Awami League in the past stay away from the February election — if the election is held — the entire electoral exercise will be rendered hollow.
Elections held with such a bulk of voters staying home do not guarantee political stability. If anything, they only worsen conditions.
At a time when Bangladesh’s economy is on a steep downward slide, with as many as 353-plus garment factories closing down and their workers suddenly unemployed — unemployment figures overall have kept going up in other sectors — with foreign investment remaining conspicuous by its absence, the country’s political future does not quite appear encouraging.
Education is in a mess; the middle and poor classes are barely managing to survive, if keeping the nose above water can be considered survival.
Now, Bangladesh’s people, more than sixteen months after the fall of the Awami League government, are in dire need of an elected political dispensation that will lead the country into the future.
But with the Awami League prevented from or unwilling to accept any election under the present non-elected regime and the BNP wary about the nature of an election that might be held on the watch of the Yunus regime, the imperative is loud and clear.
It is that an election organised by a non-partisan caretaker administration established on a constitutional basis (the recent restoration of the caretaker system by the judiciary is a point of reference) will be the only way for the country to return to an elected parliament and a government chosen by the people through a free exercise of the ballot.
At this point everything is up in the air. Statecraft is being conducted in a vacuum, with parliament dissolved, with the Speaker having resigned.
If and when a new parliament is elected, who will swear the new lawmakers into office? To what degree can the President of the republic exercise his authority? How do the Awami League and the BNP respond to these queries?
Might they, rather improbably, go for an informal alliance on the election issue?
And do not forget that in this month of the commemoration of Bangladesh’s battlefield victory over Pakistan in 1971, the history of the country, history that has been under systematic mob assault since August 2024, is being reasserted across the country and among the Bengali diaspora abroad.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is all up in the air.
