By James Orr/Chatham House

London, December 16 – Bangladesh will go to the polls on 12 February as the country seeks to reconcile a decades-long era of ‘revenge politics’ and return to a more democratic footing. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel peace laureate who has led an interim government since the ousting of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024, has faced pressure to hold a general election before Ramadan commences in mid-February.

The three-time prime minister was toppled from power after weeks of student-led protests against her Awami League government, which faced accusations of corruption. Analysts believe the most likely outcome of February’s vote will be a return to power for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by acting chairman Tarique Rahman, 60, who has lived in exile in London for nearly two decades.

Referendum on the July Charter

Whether new leadership can implement reform and deliver on promises to restructure the country’s electoral, constitutional and administrative bodies – as 25 parties agreed to in the July Charter in 2025 – is an open question. Public support for ratifying these reforms will be put to the test in a referendum in February.

‘What happened last August – the so-called Monsoon revolution – was referred to as the country’s second liberation, but I think the reality will be more continuity than change,’ said Chietigj Bajpaee, senior research fellow for South Asia at Chatham House’s Asia-Pacific Programme. ‘In terms of the cycle of often violent revenge politics that we’ve witnessed throughout Bangladesh’s history, we haven’t really seen any movement towards a genuine national reconciliation. We merely see the pendulum swinging from one extreme to the other.’ According to the United Nations, up to 1,400 people died during the crackdown on protests last year, the worst violence Bangladesh has seen since its 1971 War of Independence.

What happened last August was referred to as the country’s second liberation, but I think the reality will be more continuity than change.

Hasina was forced to flee by helicopter to India just hours before demonstrators stormed her residence in the capital Dhaka. In November, a special tribunal court in Bangladesh sentenced her in absentia to death for crimes against humanity, including her role in ordering the crackdown on protesters. Hasina remains in exile under the protection of the Indian government, which is unlikely to allow her extradition.

Months before the conviction, her Awami League party – which held power for 15 years – was banned from taking part in next year’s election. Many fear this decision could undermine the vote’s legitimacy. ‘The most likely outcome does seem to be that the BNP will win and that the Jamaat-e-Islami party [Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party ] will be the main opposition,’ said Naomi Hossain, a professor of Development Studies at SOAS University of London.

‘But the BNP are very unpopular and people will be holding their noses and voting. Anyone who remembers them from the early 2000s will recall how violent, thuggish and corrupt they were,’ she said.

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Last year, Bangladesh was ranked 151st out of 180 countries by the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, placing it among the most corrupt countries in the world. Before Hasina’s leadership, most state institutions were functional and separate from the executive, but experts say this is no longer the case.

Cycle of Revenge Politics

Today, its civil service and many once-independent institutions that provided a measure of governance and accountability, have been hollowed out. The military, police and media were also largely captured by the Awami League’s authoritarian leanings. ‘Under the previous Hasina government, we saw the persecution of BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami, and now we’ve seen a purge of the Awami League,’ said Bajpaee. ‘So the question now becomes: How do you break this cycle? There has been a lot of positive intent from the interim government but there’s a gap between rhetoric and reality.

‘The concern – and this is already manifesting itself to some degree from the National Citizen Party (NCP) student movement – is that people become more and more disenchanted as these entrenched political dynasties reassert their power and it becomes a return to politics as usual.’

Economically, too, Bangladesh’s position is perilous. While GDP surged over the past two decades, the rate of growth has slowed since the Covid pandemic. The country has few natural resources and imports all its energy. A recent pivot away from trade with India towards a new alignment with China, Pakistan and Turkey also signals a strategic shift not without risk.

‘Governments of Bangladesh really depend on economic development performance for their legitimacy, and this new government is going to have very little fiscal space to help the poor and rebuild the economy,’ said Hossain. ‘Whether or not the BNP wins and replicates the Awami League’s crony capitalism model we don’t know yet. But the only restraint on them is likely to be the possibility of another uprising – there’s not much else.’

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