It has been quite an election in Bangladesh. The Awami League, the nation’s largest political party, was compelled to stay away from the vote owing to the arbitrary decision of the now departed, unconstitutional Yunus interim regime to impose a ban on its activities.
Despite the many calls from various quarters at home and abroad for an inclusive election, the Yunus outfit paid little heed to them.
The result is out there. An election without the Awami League, the organisation responsible for leading the country to independence fifty-plus years ago, has taken place.
If any happiness has been there with the outcome of the election, it is misplaced, for the telling reality it threw up. Voter turnout was low, a fact testified to by Rumeen Farhana, the lawmaker elected as an independent candidate following her expulsion from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.
She has publicly made it known that the incoming Parliament will have no representation from at least 30 per cent of the electorate.
The hint was obvious: the 30 per cent Farhana spoke of were citizens who would have voted for the Awami League had the party been on the electoral scene.
With turnout estimated at just 26–28 per cent across the country, the election was decided by a relatively small segment of the electorate, raising the subtle question of whether there might be any opportunity or scope for a new and proper election in the times ahead.
A question doing the rounds relates to whether the new Parliament will last a full five years or will be replaced by a new one in the next one or even two years.
To what extent politics following the February 12 exercise will help ensure stability in the country is a question that will dog the BNP constantly, for the government led by Tarique Rahman will not and cannot discard the feeling that its return to power after twenty years was made possible because the Awami League was not there.
Notwithstanding the non-inclusive nature of the election, Bangladeshis across the spectrum are certainly relieved for a couple of reasons.
The first is that the Yunus outfit, having presided over the darkest period in Bangladesh’s history post-1971, has finally walked away from its illegitimate exercise of power.
The second is that Bangladesh’s people have been spared the dark spectre of the fundamentalist and anti-liberation Jamaat-e-Islami going to power. The BNP’s victory, in so many ways, has been an attainment that prevented the Jamaat from seizing a country it violently opposed in 1971 and has so far not expressed any contrition over its role.
That said, the BNP government has been making all the right noises since riding back to power. Though many of the senior leaders of the party have not been given berths in the cabinet but have been appointed advisors, Prime Minister Tarique Rahman appears to convey the message that it is a new BNP, comprising a younger echelon of politicians, that will govern.
New Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed has vowed to prevent any mob rule in the country, a sign of the new government’s exasperation at the chaos that undermined Bangladesh in the period between 2024 and 2026.
The new Minister for Liberation War Affairs is Hafiz Uddin, a renowned freedom fighter respected by citizens.
The Finance and Planning Minister is Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, who has the reputation of being a gentleman and is one of the few party veterans to be in the cabinet.
Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, who in the last two decades relentlessly kept the party banner flying, is in the cabinet as well. Nitai Roy Chowdhury is a welcome figure as Minister for Culture.
A surprise appointment was that of Khalilur Rahman, national security advisor in the Yunus regime, as Foreign Minister.
An important development through the election is the pitiful way in which the so-called king’s party, the NCP, was reduced to insignificance. It won a mere six seats.
Post-election, a welcome move was the decision by the BNP parliamentary party to not take the oath in support of the referendum or the so-called July Charter at their swearing-in ceremony.
Prior to the election and even after it, Ali Riaz, the Bangladeshi-American academic who had been thrashing out the details of the referendum and whose details were patently a threat to Bangladesh’s constitution as it was adopted in 1972, repeatedly stressed the need for the newly elected lawmakers to take an oath, apart from that enjoined upon them as MPs, promising to uphold the controversial results of the referendum.
The BNP’s refusal to make that move has been seen as its determination to stand by the constitution. It was a sign that the new government would not agree to any fetters restricting it in the exercise of its elected authority.
The new government will need to move cautiously and judiciously. It will, for quite some tim,e be engaged in relearning the techniques of running the administration.
Its leading lights have been speaking of inaugurating a new era of pluralism encompassing freedom of speech and religious harmony. Citizens are willing to give it a reasonable period to demonstrate its ability to keep to its promises.
In the days ahead, though, the new Prime Minister and his colleagues will be expected to handle some serious issues bequeathed to them by the Yunus regime. Among them is the matter of the release of all politicians, journalists, freedom fighters and others who have languished in prison for the last eighteen months.
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And then, of course, comes the economy, badly damaged by the interim government and today an ugly sign of decline in contrast to the robust infrastructure left behind by the Awami League government.
Finally, foreign policy or the exercise of it will determine the ability of the government to project a fresh new face, one underscored by positivism, before the world.
