Jayanta Roy Chowdhury
New Delhi/Dhaka, Feb 8 (.) Saima Khatun, 27, watched with horror as friends who worked in the newsroom of Dhaka-based Bangladesh Times were picked up by securitymen on Saturday. Though they were released within a few hours, she felt this was a precursor of things to come in her beloved city.
“Bangladesh under the Yunus regime has sunk into chaos. The run up to elections have been violent and worst of all the public place for liberals, for women and for minorities has shrunk far more than ever. … journalists write something freely and they get picked up,” the para-medical practitioner told . over the telephone from her home in Dhaka’s Keraniganj.
Khatun was one of those who had braved batons and bullets demanding an end to what she thought was a democracy deficit in Bangladesh one-and-a-half years back in August 2024 when a student revolt snowballed into a regime change, forcing Sheikh Hasina into exile in India.
She had briefly toyed with the idea of joining the new students’ party born out of this movement – National Citizens Party – led by another 27-year-old, Nahid Islam. But today as an election is just round the corner on February 12, she feels disillusioned.
“This is not the Bangladesh we wanted to build,” Khatun said.
On Friday, police had battled an Islamic political party’s workers at Shahbag in the heart of her city, resulting in over two scores of people being rushed to hospitals with injuries. Elsewhere, BNP workers clashed with workers supporting independent candidates at Natore district, midway between Dhaka and the Indian border.
At around the same time, Government servants sat in protest near the official residence of Muhammad Yunus, head of Bangladesh’s interim government, demanding wage hikes, while port workers at Chittagong struck work protesting possible lease to a multinational of the country’s shipping lifeline.
An organisation called Human Rights Support Society (HRSS), in a report said at least 195 people were killed and 11,229 injured in political violence over the past 17 months. Many of them in “political violence” leading up to the elections where some 127 million Bangladeshis will vote.
The forthcoming polls, slated to be held on Thursday, are shaping up to be among the most violent and consequential in the neighbouring country’s recent history. Far from a routine electoral exercise, the vote is unfolding amid street battles, labour unrest, administrative capture, and deep ideological polarisation—symptoms of a political system struggling to redefine itself after the dramatic collapse of Sheikh Hasina’s rule in August 2024.
With Awami League banned from the elections, the battle is between Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Jamaat-i-Islami.
BNP is led by Tarique Zia, son of late dictator Gen Zia ur Rahman and Bangadesh’s first woman premier Khaleda Zia who had remained ensconced in London in a self-imposed exile after being arrested in a criminal case and then allowed to travel abroad, by a previous military backed caretaker government in 2008.
Jamaat, which has emerged as the third pole is led by a medical doctor-turned-traditional Islamist leader Shafiqur Rahman. Opinion polls by the US-based International Republican Institute (IRI) in December showed that BNP was ahead with a 33 per cent support base, while Jamaat which has traditionally managed to get between 5-12 per cent of the popular vote had a 29 per cent approval rating.
However, the poll also showed that 27 per cent of respondents opposed the ban on Awami League, which had led the country to independence in 1971.
“As a consequence of the ban on AL, two political forces now dominate the electoral landscape – BNP and Jamaat – the NCP is a distant third, but frankly BNP has an edge,” said Naem Nizam, former Editor of the newspaper Bangladesh Pratidin.
However, other analysts pointed out that actions by BNP’s cadre in the aftermath of the fall of the Awami Lague regime in widespread corruption and extortion has besmirched its image. A number of BNP leaders unhappy with the way the party is functioning have stood as independent candidates against the party set up by the Late General Zia ur Rahman, including the firebrand woman leader Farheen Rumana, central international affairs secretary of the party.
Jamaat which has till now been burdened by its role in supporting the Pakistan army during the 1971 war, actions that culminated in genocide, has managed to keep its hands clean, though it is seen as being against women’s rights and secular values.
However, Jamaat has one advantage – it has managed to embed its cadre and sympathisers in Bangladesh’s administration and will have the advantage of having insiders among those who man the electoral process. Hasina’s Awami League is not exactly lying low. It has come up with a campaign – “No Boat (AL’s election symbol), No Vote”. How successful the slogan and the campaign against polling will be an issue to be seen.
Though analysts also point out that strong arm tactics which the state, BNP and Jamaat may employ might force Awami League supporters to ultimately come out and vote. “And in case they don’t there is always the possibility of votes being cast in their names,” said Nizam with a chuckle.
However, the fear is not that the elections will not be held because of the violence which has preceded it, but the way the results will shape and the violence that may come afterwards if the results do not satisfy the political players in the field who not only include the parties contesting or barred from the contest but also the interim government and behind it the army which effectively remains a force behind the shadows of the current dispensation. . JRC KK
