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As he prepared to leave Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, to return to his hometown to vote, Mohammad Ali could not believe he was taking part in a historic election.
“I will vote for the first time and participate in an election that looks fair” after watching three consecutive elections that were not legitimate, said Ali, a fourth-year political science student at Dhaka University, who planned to vote with some childhood friends. – We are very excited.
At a tea stall near a private university on the other side of the capital, Rahul Ghosh Joy also spoke of his excitement over Thursday’s vote, calling it an “election for students”.
“It feels like a dream come true,” said Joy, 23, a biological sciences student at Dhaka Independent University.
“Students have worked very hard for this type of election, and now we have to work (more) to hold fair elections” and to keep the country from “deteriorating” further, he told CBC News.
It has been 18 months since violent student-led protests toppled Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh’s former autocratic leader, who ruled for 15 years while her government eroded democratic norms, stifled critics and jailed opponents.
Hasina fled by helicopter into exile in India, but not before as many as 1,400 people died during protests in the final days of her regime, according to the United Nations. The vast majority were killed by security forces in a crackdown ordered by Hasina – which the UN says could amount to crimes against humanity.
The uprising is considered the world’s first successful protest by Generation Z. But in the months since Hasina’s ouster, hopes for long-term reforms in Bangladesh have dwindled.
The interim government led by Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus has failed to fully implement an ambitious reform agenda, and many Bangladeshis have grown frustrated with the slow pace of change.
Excitement aside, Ali, who was part of the protests, expressed concern that this week’s election could lead to instability and said he was no longer convinced that comprehensive reforms were in his country’s future.
“I fear that many may remain on paper and not be fully executed,” he said.
There is still a struggle between the old guard
The country has traditionally vacillated between two major political parties, Hasina’s Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), but this election is different. The 2024 Rebellion has changed the political landscape, although it is still a battle between familiar faces of the old guard.
The absence of the Awami League, which was banned by the interim government last year after public pressure, left a vacuum that Bangladesh’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, exploited, analysts said.
The BNP — whose leader, Tarique Rahman, returned to the country in December after 17 years of self-imposed exile in Britain — is still seen as the favorite, but the election could be tighter than many expected months ago.
Shafiqur Rahman, the 67-year-old doctor who heads Jamaat-e-Islami, is now a serious contender after spending years on the fringes of Bangladeshi politics. His party was banned while Hasina was in power.
Students in the country are a powerful voting bloc, and turnout is expected to be high on Thursday.
“We have almost more than 35 percent of new voters and young voters, generation Z voters,” said Tawfique Haque, a political science professor at North South University in Dhaka, many of whom are voters who were also targeted by the regime.
Jamaat-e-Islami’s conservatism
A party founded by student leaders last year, the National Civic Party, failed to gain much traction and took a controversial decision to join the Jamaat-led alliance.
But the Jamaat’s socially conservative views have upset some moderates in the country; for example, the party does not have a single female candidate.
Shafiqur Rahman himself caused controversy last fall when he declared that women should only work five hours a day so they could focus more on their families. In a recent post on social media, he stated that throwing women out of the house in the name of modernity is a “form of prostitution”.
After the statement sparked protests, Jamaat claimed that their leader’s account had been hacked.
Bangladesh is a parliamentary republic, where voters elect candidates in their districts, and the leader of the party or alliance that wins the majority becomes prime minister.
Haque says the more contested the election and each seat, the greater the potential for violence or clashes at polling stations.
Security has been beefed up around polling booths across the country, with around 108,000 members of the armed forces deployed — the largest number deployed in Bangladesh’s electoral history.
Armed activists of Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League, along with its student wing, took to the streets across the country on Tuesday to confront protesters demanding an end to the government job quota system.
There will be enormous pressure on the winning party to deliver results quickly.
“Perhaps within six months, the government will have to show some tangible results to the citizens, especially the young generation,” Haque said, stressing that the electorate does not have enough patience.
Geopolitical effects
Another reason to watch the Bangladesh election closely is the effect the results could have on geopolitics and regional alliances.
Ties between neighboring India and Bangladesh are “at their lowest level” in years, according to Haque, while relations with China are friendlier than ever.
India and Bangladesh accuse each other of destabilizing relations. New Delhi has repeatedly expressed concern over a rise in attacks on Bangladesh’s Hindu minority and is generally wary of the possibility of an Islamist party coming to power.
Meanwhile, authorities in Indian states led by the Hindu nationalist BJP along the border have cracked down on Bengali-speaking Muslims accused of being illegal immigrants.
“If Jamaat wins, I don’t know what will happen, because India is still probably not ready to accept a Jamaat-led government,” Haque said, pointing to current tensions between the two countries over religious minorities.
Anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh is at an all-time high, with deep resentment at the fact that New Delhi has sheltered Hasina and ignored repeated demands for her extradition.
Late last year, Bangladesh’s war crimes tribunal sentenced the ousted leader to death for crimes against humanity related to violence against protesters as her regime fell.
Hasina has denied wrongdoing and called the trial in which she was convicted a “farce”, while also continuing to mobilize supporters from exile and plot her return.
‘Why didn’t I stop him?’
For those still grieving family members of those killed in the protests, the current election campaign is emotionally draining.
Zartaj Parveen wakes up every morning in disbelief that her eldest son is gone.
Shafiquddin Ahmed Ahnaf was just 17 when he was shot in the chest by security forces at the height of the protests he insisted on joining.
“Why didn’t I stop him?” Parveen asked herself, her voice bursting with emotion, in an interview with CBC News. – He had his whole life ahead of him.
“These kids gave their lives, gave their blood, and it seems like it meant nothing,” she said.
Parveen called the 18-month interim government led by Mohammad Yunus a “failed government” and said she had little hope that any of the frontrunners in the current election would work to ensure those responsible for the protest deaths were brought to justice.
She believes her son would want “fair and beautiful elections” and constantly worries about how her younger son, Iftekhar Ahmed Arvin, is handling it.
He is not yet 14, and he idolizes his older brother.
Arvin “doesn’t like any political party now. Since his brother was killed, he thinks whoever comes will be the same old.”
