By P.K.Balachandran/Counterpoint
Colombo, February 12 – The 13th parliamentary elections in Bangladesh today, February 12, are taking place under unprecedented conditions. The old warhorse, the Awami League, is absent, disqualified on charges of misrule. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has emerged from the doghouse and is poised to capture power. The previously banned Jamaat-i-Islami has teamed up with the new student-led outfit, the National Citizens Party (NCP), posing a challenge to the BNP.
The Bangladeshi parliament is a unicameral legislature consisting of 350 Members of which 300 are elected from 300 territorial constituencies. The remaining 50 seats are reserved for women who are elected by the aforesaid elected Members of Parliament.
While the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is believed to be the front runner, the obscurantist Jamaat-i-Islami could be a close second creating apprehensions among liberals and women.
Ground reports from Daily Times of Bangladesh correspondents indicate that the BNP and its allies could secure a landslide victory, potentially winning around two-thirds of the parliamentary seats. The BNP-led alliance could secure up to 205 seats, a comfortable majority.
The Jamaat-i-Islami and its alliance partners are projected to win around 48 seats. Twenty seats are expected to see close contests between BNP and Jamaat-backed candidates.
A survey released by the United States-based International Republican Institute (IRI) in early December 2025 put the BNP at 33 percent, with Jamaat close behind at 29 percent, and projected 6 percent support for the NCP.
Another survey – jointly conducted by Projection BD, NarratiV, the International Institute of Law and Diplomacy (IILD) and the Jagoron Foundation – positioned the BNP at 34.7 percent and Jamaat at 33.6 percent, calling it, statistically, “a very close contest”.
The BNP is contesting the election with its own candidates in 292 of 300 constituencies, leaving just eight seats for the allies of the party. However, as many as 92 candidates in the field are BNP “rebels” contesting as Independents. These could spoil the BNP’s chances to an extent in some constituencies and help Jamaat in the process.
The elections offer a big relief to Bangladeshis as the Awami League under Sheikh Hasina has ruled with an iron hand for more than a decade. Her high-handedness had resulted in 1400 lives in the July Revolution. Therefore, the prospect of electing a government of one’s choice is cause for celebration. Opposition leaders, long persecuted and jailed, are now running as candidates, freely holding rallies for the first time in years.
Sheikh Hasina, their tormentor, is in exile in India and would face a death sentence for crimes against humanity if she returned to Bangladesh. Her Awami League is banned.
Bad Tiding for Women
But for a large number of women, including those women who were at the forefront of the July Revolution, the elections are a source of fear given the resurgence of regressive Islamist policies advocated by the Jamaat-i-Islami. With the student revolutionaries of the NCP on the Jamaat’s bandwagon, the threat to women is huge.
Only 3.8 % of the candidates in the election are women. The Jamaat has the distinction of not fielding a single female candidate. And this in a country where there were two women Prime Ministers, Sheikh Hasina of the Awami League and Khaleda Zia of the BNP.
“This was meant to be an election representing change and reform. Instead, we are seeing women being systematically erased and their rights threatened,” Sabiha Sharmin, 25, told The Guardian. “We worry this election will throw the country back 100 years,” she added.
Up and Coming Jamaat-i-Islami
Since the fall of the Awami League government due to the July 2024 uprising, the Jamaat-i-Islami or Jamaat for short, has been presenting itself as a key force behind the uprising. The unorganised students outfit NCP failed to counter that propaganda, with the result that today, the NCP is only a camp follower of the Jamaat.
The Jamaat has expanded its influence across political categories, social and economic classes, but the NCP has been resting on its laurels.
The Jamaat believes in bringing Sharia law to Bangladesh. But whether it brings the harsh Sharia laws or not, Islamism will be at the centre of Bangladeshi politics, predicts Thomas Kean, the International Crisis Group’s senior consultant on Bangladesh.
Jamaat’s influence is strong, particularly in the rural areas where people are naturally conservative. Last year, small-town girls were prevented from playing football by religious leaders who termed it indecent. In the urban areas, Islamist vigilante groups confronted women who did not cover their hair or dress modestly.
Rhetoric from the Jamaat’s supremo, Shafiqur Rahman, has had a chilling effect. In an interview to Al Jazeera, he said a woman could never lead the party as it was un-Islamic. Last year, he denied the existence of marital rape., He described rape as “immoral women and men coming together outside marriage”.
“These are the kinds of views and policies you hear in Iran and Afghanistan,” said Zayba Tahzeeb, 21, a physics student who attended the Dhaka midnight march. “Women’s sovereignty, our freedoms, our independence: all are at stake in this election, Zayba told The Guardian.
Among the policies proposed by the party is reducing women’s working hours from eight hours to five, with the government subsidising the lost income, so women can spend more time at home. Women make up 44% of the country’s workforce, according to the International Labour Organization, the highest proportion in South Asia. And paid work is a right fiercely guarded by women across economic strata in Bangladesh.
On reconciling the ideological differences between the Jamaat and NCP, Rahman said that there are boundaries the NCP could not cross. “If our core positions, especially on women and minorities, are sought to be diluted,” he told Al Jazeera, “the alliance will not continue.”
Dissension in NCP
Many women in the NCP did not like its alliance with the Jamaat.
Tajnuva Jabeen, a doctor and founder member of NCP, was one of a wave of women who left the NCP after the alliance was announced. “It was such a clear betrayal,” Jabeen said. “This was a historic opportunity to create a third political force, to represent the change that so many people died for in the July uprising. Instead, they failed the people and silenced the women who led this movement. I’m sorry to say, this election will not represent the spirit of the revolution.”
Jamaat’s Strengths
Analysts emphasise that many now supporting Jamaat-i-Islami are simply disenchanted with the political old guard. Since 1971, the country has swung between two parties, the Awami League and the BNP, both of which have been accused of indulging in dynastic politics and rampant corruption.
The Jamaat-i-Islami appears particularly popular among young, first-time voters, who make up 42% of the electorate and are hungry for change. The authoritarian nature of Hasina’s regime somewhat discredited secularism and made voters more open to Islamist politics this time around, The Guardian quoted analysts as saying.
Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem Arman, a barrister standing for election in the Dhaka-11 constituency, said that the fears of women towards his party were unfounded and part of a political smear campaign.
“When you talk to urban elites, their talking points are whether women can be in the top position of the government, whether women can wear whatever they want,” Arman said. “These are – I’m sorry to use the word – feminist demands. The ground level is very different. The primary requirement of the women on the ground, the working class, is safety, and that’s our prime concern.”
Thousands of female supporters of the Jamaat took to the streets of Arman’s constituency in Dhaka to deny that the party would restrict their freedoms.
“The policies the Jamaat is proposing will improve women’s lives and their safety,” said Sirajim Munira, 27. “I think it will be good for the country to bring in Islamic law because it will make us honest and corruption-free.”
Ainum Nahar, 58, said Jamaat’s grassroots were driven by women. “Jamaat empowers us,” she said. Yet she said that women should never head the party.
“As an Islamic party, it is prohibited for women to be leaders,” Nahar said. “But we will stand behind the men to inspire and encourage them to move the country forward.”
National Citizens’ Party
NCP candidates are standing in 30 seats as part of a seat-sharing deal within the alliance.
NCP leader Nahid Islam defends his decision to team up with Jamaat. “It’s an electoral alliance, not ideological,” he told Al Jazeera. “We do have some common issues: reform, combating corruption, good governance, sovereignty protection, and opposing hegemony.”
But Nahid adds that there are boundaries the NCP will not cross. “If our core positions, especially on women and minorities, are compromised, the alliance will not continue.”
Nahid described his alliance with the Jamaat only as an “electoral alliance” and not an “ideological alliance”.
Samina Luthfa, a Dhaka University sociology professor and social activist, told Al Jazeera that Jamaat-NCP alliance will benefit the Jamaat and not the NCP.
The Jamaat will ride to power on the shoulders of the NCP and abandon it once it secures power. It will then use State power to build itself up, she said.
According to Luthfa the NCP’s identity has remained largely “reactive”, shaped more by “hasty responses to events and power moves” than by coherent thinking.
The Jamaat’s motive in entering into an alliance with the NCP is to acquire a modern image. The Jamaat is trying to show that it is not extremist or obscurantist but is actually a centrist party with Islamic values.
NCP-BNP Talks Failed
Initially the NCP wanted an alliance with the BNP but the BNP spurned it over the issue of holding a referendum on constitutional changes along with the parliamentary polls on February 12.
The BNP believed that any reform would have to be carried out by an elected parliament and not through a Referendum. In a Referendum the masses are asked to either say or no on the reform proposals. There is no collective decision making arrived through discussions.
But the NCP wanted to take the referendum route because it knew that the BNP will win the elections, and use its strength in parliament to bring only those reforms suitable to it.
END
