At the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s (BNP) office in Nayapaltan, a steady stream of visitors are buying memorabilia from the small store on the ground floor. Badges with the BNP’s party symbol, “dhaaner sheesh” (sheaf of paddy), are the popular choice, amid posters of Begum Khaleda Zia, Ziaur Rahman, Tarique Rahman and his family, books and T-shirts, among other items.
Banners, hoardings and posters of Khaleda Zia and her son, Tarique Rahman, dot the facade of the building and the walls of the road outside, a busy four-lane in downtown Dhaka. A couple of painters and electricians are at work, painting the walls white and fixing the lights ahead of the February 12 elections, in which the BNP is expected to return to power after 20 years.
“We are asking people to go out and vote, they have been deprived of this for the last 17 years,” Goyeshwar Chandra Roy, BNP’s standing committee (the party’s top policy-making body) member and the most prominent Hindu leader, told The Indian Express.
About two kilometres away, in Gulistan, stands the Awami League’s abandoned head office. The stench of urine is overpowering, and the imposing building is deserted, barring a few destitute men wandering around. Residents say the area is now being used as a parking space for tempos of local flower suppliers. “It has become a toilet and a storage place for the local shops,” said a local Awami League supporter who didn’t want to be identified.
At the heart of Bangladesh’s elections is a tale of two main political parties, one present and the other absent. The BNP, which is omnipresent and is set to win the national polls, unless there is a massive electoral upset by the Jamaat-e-Islami. And the Awami League, which has been banned from participating in the polls, with its leaders, including former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, having either fled the country or in hiding, and its supporters and activists nowhere to be seen.
While there are campaign posters of the BNP’s “dhaaner sheesh” symbol everywhere, there are none of the Awami League’s “boat” symbol. This is in sharp contrast to the run-up to the 2014, 2018 and 2024 elections, when posters of Sheikh Hasina could be seen everywhere. This time, they have been replaced by posters of the late Khaleda Zia.
In this country of over 18 crore people, about 12.7 crore — about 6.4 cr men and about 6.2 cr women — are registered voters. Bangladesh has undertaken the task of holding elections and a referendum on constitutional reforms on the same day. The proposed reforms seek to restore the balance between the executive and legislature, including limiting the PM’s term to a maximum two terms of five years each, setting up a bicameral Parliament, restoration of a neutral caretaker government system and empowering the Election Commission.
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India has been calling for credible, inclusive and participatory elections — which means that the Awami League should be allowed to participate.
With no strong competitor in the electoral battlefield, the BNP is expected to be the clear winner. The only debate is the scale of victory — BNP leaders are hoping to win a comfortable majority in the 300 directly-elected seats of the Bangladesh Parliament.
“BNP has a strong network of partymen at the grassroots, and is ahead of its rivals,” Kazi Mohammed Mahbubur Rahman, professor of political science at Dhaka University, said.
In the absence of the Awami League, Rahman said, secular voters may opt for the BNP. Saying that the people were frustrated with the Awami’s League’s electoral rigging, he added that they would want to vote in favour of the BNP.
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The BNP, led by Tarique Rahman, is pitching itself as seeking to establish a “new political culture oriented towards the future, opposite to politics of revenge and retribution”, according to its manifesto.
Pointing to the party manifesto, BNP leaders said the party “believes that nation-building is not just about state governance, but about creating a unified national identity by overcoming divisions”.
“Although the Hindu minority population is small, our pujas have increased manifold. What does that tell you — that the Hindu minority community is free to celebrate their festivals and there is no targeting of minorities,” said senior BNP leader Goyeshwar Chandra Roy.
“We want to live peacefully, in a stable Bangladesh,” said a BNP supporter, with pictures of Rahman’s wife, Zubaida, and daughter, Zaima, on his shirt.
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Meanwhile, at the Awami League’s deserted office, a poster labels it as the “international fascism and massacre research institute”. Such is the anger against the Awami League and Hasina’s regime that the street outside has been renamed from Bangabandhu Avenue to Shahid Abrar Fahad Avenue, named after one of the students who was allegedly killed by Awami League youth wing activists in 2019.
