Anti-government protestors celebrate in Dhaka on August 5, 2024. Protests in Bangladesh that began as student-led demonstrations against government hiring rules in July culminated on August 5, in the prime minister fleeing and the military announcing it would form an interim government. (Photo by Abu Sufian Jewel / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP)
General elections are expected to take place in Bangladesh sometime around April 2026. The interim government led by Muhammad Yunus has established constitutional and election reform commissions for this purpose. However, Bangladesh’s main opposition party has warned of instability and “strong resentment within the people” if elections are not held by December this year, after the country’s de facto prime minister said the poll could be delayed until 2026.
The country’s two biggest parties, Awami League and rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party, had both wanted elections to be held by December this year, but Yunus said that a vote could be held between December 2025 and June 2026. Earlier, a former ministerial colleague of Yunus, student leader Nahid Islam, said elections this year would be difficult as policing and law and order have not yet been fully restored.
The constituent assembly adopted Bangladesh’s constitution on 4 November 1972, establishing a secular, multiparty parliamentary democracy. The Constitution of Bangladesh established a unitary, Westminster-style parliamentary republic with universal suffrage. Bangladesh is governed by a 350-member parliament, known as the Jatiyo Sangshad. Three hundred of its members are elected on a first past the post basis, and 50 seats are reserved for female nominees by political parties.
Bangladesh holds elections regularly, but it is suffering from corruption, lack of press freedom, enforced disappearances, violent protests, military rule, elected dictatorships, poorly working checks and balances, and opposition boycotts of elections. Moreover, it has gone through the devastating experience of millions who died during the liberation movement in 1971. It has also gone through long military rules, selection of parliament members in the name of elections and dynasty rules.
Among two major political parties of Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Awami League (BAL) under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh, led the struggle for independence, first through massive populist and civil disobedience movements, such as the Six Point Movement and 1971 Non-Cooperation Movement, and then during the Bangladesh Liberation War. After the emergence of independent Bangladesh, the Awami League won the first general elections in 1973 but was overthrown in 1975 after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Subsequent military regimes forced the party onto the political sidelines, and many of its senior leaders and activists were executed and jailed. After the restoration of democracy in 1990, the Awami League emerged as one of the principal players of Bangladeshi politics.
Since 2014, Awami League Party in Bangladesh has ruled the nation without opposition in the Parliament as the Bangladesh Nationalist Party ( BNP) boycotted the elections. When there are no oppositions in the Parliament, it is natural for the ruling party to be more autocratic and it runs the nation with its one sided decisions. In such circumstances, there could be no parameters to judge whether the government is making right or wrong decisions.
Hasina, after the student revolution, who now lives in India, and most of her senior colleagues in the party and government are in jail or fled the country as the interim government accused them of committing crimes against humanity. The interim government banned Awami League and all of its activities in cyberspace and elsewhere, under the Anti-Terrorism Act. The ban would last until the International Crimes Tribunal completes the trial of the party and its leaders. According to some political observers of Bangladesh, this political transformation was “Bangladesh’s second liberation,” an era that recalls 1971 but sets a path towards a future founded on peoples’ power, institutional integrity, and national self-respect. The fall of the Indian-backed administration has created an active strategic vacuum. The vacuum will entice China, the U.S., the EU, the Gulf, and Russia to vie for influence. Bangladesh, with a population of over 175 million and a GDP of $460 billion (World Bank, 2023), is no longer a marginal state. It overshot India’s per capita income for a fleeting instant in 2021, a testament to the unspoken strength of its economy.
After boycotting the general election since 2014, the main opposition party, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) was absent in the parliament. The primary reason given by the BNP for not contesting the 2014 elections was the abrogation by the Awami League-led government in 2011 of a constitutional provision enacted in 1998 that allowed for a caretaker government to take the reins of the state in the run-up to the elections. The caretaker government was meant to ensure free and fair elections, this provision of the constitution scrapped by two-thirds majority government of the Awami League. In the name of the two-thirds majority, the scrapping of the constitution provision of caretaker government by Awami League was the primary cause of an election boycott by the BNP. For the first time, since the 1991 general election, the BNP has decided to participate in the elections.
In this regard, the High Court restored the constitutional provision for a caretaker government system to oversee parliamentary elections on June 10, 2025, effectively nullifying the previous 15th Amendment to the constitution, which had abolished the caretaker system. The court emphasized that the caretaker government system, established through political consensus, is vital for ensuring free, fair, and credible elections. For the stability of Bangladesh, the forthcoming election would break the continued boycotting election by the opposition in Bangladesh.
Currently, there are many challenges for the Yunus government in Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s strained relations with its giant neighbour India, which staunchly backed Hasina’s regime until the very end, present a further hurdle to maintaining stability. Meanwhile, the interim government is also saddled with the responsibility of managing over a million Rohingya refugees, as well as dealing with instability along the border with war-torn Myanmar.
When Yunus entered office, foreign exchange reserves were dwindling, and food price inflation stood at almost 15 per cent. His actions, including installing competent officials at key institutions and ministries to improve policymaking and restore confidence, appear to have averted an economic crisis. But the economy has still taken a hit, due to political unrest and the uncertainty it has shown for businesses and investors. Bangladeshis continue to suffer from stubbornly high inflation, particularly in the cost of food, while foreign exchange shortages have contributed to widespread power cuts. The International Monetary Fund expects growth to rebound sharply and inflation to halve in the next fiscal year, but a buoyant economy will require reforms to encourage local and foreign investment, tackle corruption and red tape, and diversify into new sectors. Conversely, failure to create enough jobs for Bangladesh’s young, increasingly well-educated population risks sowing the seeds of future political unrest.
Yunus’s “new Bangladesh” has also faced allegations of rising violence against religious minorities – particularly Hindus, who make up around 8 per cent of the population – and accusations of turning a blind eye to, if not encouraging, Islamist forces’ growing influence in the wake of Hasina’s ouster.
Elections are the foundation of democracy. If the foundation is weak and an election may be legally correct, but if it lacks moral and social acceptance, then the entire process loses its credibility. The interim government must be very careful in conducting fair elections in the country. The forthcoming election is crucial for the stability of Bangladesh and if it follows the similar path of violence and irregularities like previous elections, democracy in Bangladesh would be more unstable and the economic gain made by the country could start to backtrack?
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