The elections to the Dhaka University Central Students Union (DUCSU) on September 9 have thrown up a couple of new realities.
In the first place, the victory obtained by the Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami, has, for the very first time in the history of Dhaka University, marked the entry of a force swearing by Islamic principles into the centre of an institution reputed for its secular role in all nationalist movements in pre- and post-1971 Bangladesh.
In the second place, the victory of the Shibir, which the Jatiyotabadi Chhatra Dal, the student body of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), has rejected as having been a blatant exercise in vote rigging at the DUCSU elections on Tuesday, pushes the BNP up against a wall.
The BNP, whose stalwarts had maintained that the JCD would win the elections hands down, has now been forced into a situation where its leadership cannot but lick their wounds from the mauling they have had.
In their bid to explain away the debacle at the DUCSU polls, some BNP leaders have voiced the improbable notion that the Shibir won on the strength of the support it received from the Chhatra League, the proscribed student affiliate of the Awami League.
That raises questions about the BNP’s understanding of the situation. There is, of course, much truth in the idea that neither the Awami League nor the Chhatra League has been happy about the role played by the BNP since the fall of the Awami League government in August last year.
The BNP and its followers have been responsible for much of the vandalism against the Awami League and the symbols of the nation’s War of Liberation perpetrated in the last thirteen months.
Besides, accusations have been made against a BNP politician thought to have been behind the demolition of the home-cum-museum of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Father of the Nation.
For the BNP, this one year that has gone by has not only been a missed opportunity to reclaim lost ground but also a matter of misplaced priorities.
When the Awami League government collapsed in August 2024, a prematurely cheerful BNP seriously thought that its way back to power was there for its leaders to take to.
Having been out of office since 2006 and not having been in a position to challenge the Awami League government in a strategic way in the years Sheikh Hasina was in power, the party began to believe that early elections under the Yunus dispensation would be organised and that at the elections it would have a walkover.
The BNP leadership in the past thirteen months, while remaining careful about not coming into conflict with the Yunus regime — recall the meeting its exiled leader Tarique Rahman had with Yunus on the latter’s visit to London — did not quite realise that its politics was losing steam.
This loss of steam has been in contrast with the quiet way in which the Jamaat-e-Islami was conducting itself in the changed political situation.
While the Jamaat remained busy placing its loyalists in such critically important places as the higher educational institutions, the media and banks, the followers of the BNP engaged themselves in such anti-social activities as extortion across the country.
Well-meaning BNP leaders were themselves shocked at the activities of their party supporters. Besides, BNP activists have been accused of targeting grassroots Awami League leaders and workers and perpetrating violence against them in the interior of the country.
The DUCSU elections should be a moment for the BNP leadership to pause and reflect on where, why and how the party went wrong in its approach to the voting at Dhaka University on Tuesday.
The fear for the BNP, in light of the advances made by the Jamaat in these past many months, is that if and when the general elections are held, it may not be able to obtain the majority that will allow it to form the next government for Bangladesh.
The fear is grounded on two factors. The first is that the Jamaat could, in alliance with other religious political parties as well as the newly formed National Citizen Party (NCP), come by a clear electoral victory. It has become obvious by now that the young followers of Muhammad Yunus are in little mood to see the BNP ride back to power.
The second fear stems from what the BNP leadership sees as the blatant rigging that went into ensuring the victory of the Shibir at the DUCSU elections.
If such a scenario shapes up at the general elections, slated for February next year, the BNP will certainly be unwilling at this point to go for elections that could be a repeat of DUCSU, albeit on a larger national scale, and thus prevent it from regaining the power it has been unable to recover since 2006.
So where does that leave the BNP? Its blunders since the fall of the Awami League have been many, the more significant among them being its inability or unwillingness to take a stand against the mob rule, which has gone into hounding the Awami League and the Jatiyo Party of the late General Hussein Muhammad Ershad.
Beyond and above the ramifications of the DUCSU elections, there remains the increasingly lengthening shadow of the Awami League on Bangladesh’s politics.
In recent weeks, activists of the party and its affiliate organisations have been making appearances on the streets of not only Dhaka but also other cities and towns in the country, raising loud slogans in favour of Sheikh Hasina.
Moreover, citizens, ranging from poor rickshaw pullers to shopkeepers to the middle class, have openly been voicing the opinion that conditions have been getting worse since August 2024, that the country is in bad shape, and that the period of the Awami League government was better owing to the stability it maintained in the country.
A huge question mark thus hangs over national politics. With the BNP seeing its former junior partner, the Jamaat, moving past it to gain the political centre, its leadership is naturally worried about the party’s electoral chances.
But then comes the larger question: Is Bangladesh in a situation where the projected elections can be held in February 2026?
The question should worry the BNP. After the drubbing it has taken at DUCSU, will it shape a new strategy through acknowledging the need for consultations with the Awami League and the Jatiyo Party to pave the road to fully participatory and inclusive general elections?
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The growing consensus is that the embattled Awami League has the wherewithal to stage a return to national politics.
But does the BNP have a similar ability to reclaim its place in politics after what happened at Dhaka University on Tuesday?
