The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) on Tuesday formally rolled out its demand for the next general election by this July-August, the timeline likely to put pressure on the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government that has indicated a poll schedule either by the end of 2025 or mid-2026.
The divergence in timelines, multiple sources said, would make the political landscape in the neighbouring country more volatile at a time when the key constituents of the Yunus regime — like the student leaders, who enjoy the support of radical Islamist parties like the Jamaat-e-Islami, Hefazat-e-Islam and Hizb-ut-Tahrir — are keen on deferring the elections.
“We have repeatedly said that there is no alternative to an elected government. This is the most important aspect of democracy. We believe the election is possible by mid-year, that is, by July-August this year,” BNP secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said during a news conference this afternoon.
“... We call on the government, the Election Commission and all political parties to take measures to hold the election by mid-year in the greater interest of the country,” he added.
As the demand followed last night’s prolonged standing committee meeting of the BNP, virtually attended by its acting chairperson Tarique Rahman from London, a source said that the time has come to build an opinion in favour of early election by putting pressure on the interim government.
Yunus and his team of advisers from NGOs and the student community, however, have been pushing the poll dates, insisting that reforms in various sectors have to precede the general elections.
The fact that there has been no dilution to that stand was clear as Sarjis Alam, one of the coordinators of the Anti Discrimination Students’ Movement that led the protests against Hasina, insisted on the same day that the BNP’s timeline cannot be met.
“Both sides will put pressure on each other over the election schedule... This will make Bangladesh politics more volatile,” said a veteran Bangladeshi journalist.
Over the last six tumultuous months, the BNP and the Team Yunus — comprising a rainbow coalition of Islamist parties, their student outfits and some civil society members — have been broadly on the same page in discrediting the earlier Hasina regime. Even as the law-and-order deteriorated in Bangladesh resulting in unprecedented atrocities on the minorities and the economy tumbled to a new low, their narratives have been similar as they swatted away allegations of misrule and mismanagement.
Their differences began tumbling out when the student leaders, with the backing from the Islamists, gave the call for discrediting the 1971 Liberation War, which led to the birth of Bangladesh, and a new Constitution, burying the one drafted in 1972.
On the question of banning the Awami League from taking part in the next polls, a demand from the student leaders, the BNP sang a different tune.
As the BNP is gearing up for the next polls, the party cannot afford to discredit
the Liberation War as the party’s founder General Ziaur Rahman drew his political capital from being a freedom fighter.
As the Constitution was the fallout of the war, where millions lost their lives, the BNP cannot disown it either. At a time when the BNP is confident of coming to power, the party cannot push for an election without the Awami League as that would discredit the polls.
The perspective of the student leaders, with hardliner Islamists as their mentors, however, is different as they want to pitch the July-August 2024 uprising against Hasina as the watershed moment, making it their political capital before the polls.
“They want to cling on to power by any means and float a political outfit along with a broader alliance with the Islamist parties. They want to buy time as the student leaders do not have any support base as of now,” said a source close to Alamgir.
Aware of this gameplan, the BNP strategists are pushing for early polls as they fear that a mood in favour of the Islamist ideals — propagated by the student leaders and their mentors — would draw supporters away from the party, said a political observer in Dhaka.
“They have begun preparing for the polls and that’s evident with the BNP leaders attacking the government on bread and butter issues, something they didn’t do earlier,” he said, referring to the BNP’s decision to oppose the government’s decision to raise VAT and supplementary duties on 100-odd products.
The issue of hike in taxes and duties was discussed in the standing committee meeting last night and it was decided to hit the streets on how the hikes would further fuel inflation, which is already above 10 per cent.