Bangladesh: Why Muhammad Yunus Is Scared

 THIS YEAR HAS BEGUN for Bangladesh with the sort of unpredictability and uncer­tainty that dominated last year. The political crisis set off by the removal of the govern­ment led by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and its replacement by an unconstitutional and therefore illegitimate regime headed by Muhammad Yunus continues, with little likelihood of any positive change in 2026.

A good deal has, of course, happened in the months that have elapsed since the fall of the Awami League government in August 2024. But if citizens had expected any takeaway from the change, of an encouraging sort, they have been disappointed. Politics has clearly been on a slide, with mobs creating havoc across the country. Well-planned agitation against the foundational principles of Bangladesh has been deployed in undermining the state, indeed nearly every structure of not just politics but of administration and society as well.

In the months since August 2024 all symbols of Bangladesh’s War of Liberation, a period in history Bengalis have consistently been proud of remembering and celebrat­ing, have come under assault. Such potent symbols of history as the home of the nation’s founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the monument to the inauguration of the country’s first government, known as the Mujibnagar Government, have been demolished. Across the country, ageing freedom fighters and their homes and families have come under mob assault. Former ministers, lawmakers, judges of the Supreme Court, chief election commissioners, theatre activists, academics, journalists and others have been in prison on concocted charges. They have been afforded little to no opportunity of any recourse to justice.

Anarchy and an absence as well as undermining of the rule of law, on the watch of Muhammad Yunus and his interim regime, have been the reality so far. Translation: everything that has gone into the hollowing out of the Bangladesh nation-state promises to continue in 2026, unless of course a dramatic change takes place. Or unless a miracle happens. But in an era when miracles are few and far between, there is little promise of 2026 being a time Bangladesh’s citizens could look forward to a re-emergence of their country as the homeland they had inhabited till the rise of mob rule in August 2024.

Despite political misgivings across the spectrum about what 2026 might bring for Bangladesh, there are the new realities that cannot be overlooked. The death of Begum Khaleda Zia, the former prime minister, and the return of her son Tarique Rahman after seventeen years in exile in Britain have set off tremors in po­litical circles. Rahman’s initial remarks upon his arrival in Dhaka were regarded as a well-crafted statement that avoided causing a new spate of bitterness in politics. However, in the past many days, statements by some senior leaders of his Bangla­desh Nationalist Party (BNP) have appeared to be a return to the divisive politics of the recent past. A senior leader of the party, to the consternation of citizens, utilised the funeral ceremonies of Khaleda Zia to castigate Sheikh Hasina as being responsible for the slow manner in which Zia died. Another BNP politician has offered the outlandish notion that during its years in power, the Awami League governed at the behest of successive Indian governments in New Delhi.

Clearly for BNP, especially for Tarique Rahman, the expectation is that the party will be able to reshape policy if it means to return to power. BNP, which has never been able to return as the party of government since October 2006, un­derstands the compulsions it is up against. It has observed with dismay the lead taken in national politics by the Jamaat-e-Islami, its once junior partner in government as well as in opposition. The Jamaat, around which have coalesced a number of smaller Islamist parties as well as the National Citizens Party (NCP), referred to disparagingly as the king’s party owing to the presence of a number of Yunus followers in it, could not have been happy with Tarique Rahman’s return to Bangladesh. Indeed, till Rahman’s return questions were repeatedly raised as to why the BNP acting chairperson was not being able to come home despite his meetings with Yunus and Jamaat leaders in London in 2025.

The big issue for BNP at this point is to shape strategy regarding the elections scheduled for February 12 this year. BNP’s despera­tion is being manifested of late. Tarique Rahman’s recent meeting with the Islami Chhatra Shibir, the students’ wing of the Jamaat, and his party’s Jatiyotabadi youth wings, was demonstrative of his party’s desire to bridge the chasm which has apparently devel­oped between BNP and the Jamaat.

If the cynics are to be given any credibility, BNP and the Jamaat, in the weeks between now and the election, will erase their differences and come together to prevent a return of what they have referred to, without providing any logic to their arguments, as fascist forces. The reference is of course to the Awami League. Ironically, fascism in its very real form has been practised by the Yunus regime and its rabid followers in the time since the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina government.

So BNP, Jamaat and other rightist political parties and factions are busy planning their electoral campaigns for the February 12 exercise. But behind all this talk, the question that looms large is whether the elections will at all take place given the growing demands for an inclusive vote that will result in the emergence of a legitimate democratic government in Ban­gladesh. The recent statements on the need for inclusive polls made by a group of members of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and four lawmakers in Britain have added to the rising chorus overseas for the elections to be inclusive if they are to be fair, free, and credible.

The inclusivity question relates to the Awami League whose exiled leader Sheikh Hasina has made it clear that for the country to return to representative government, it is important that the Yunus regime be shown the door. Of late, she has been observed asking the traditional supporters of the Awami League—and they number anywhere between 35 per cent and 45 per cent of the electorate—to stay away from the elections if the Awami League symbol, the boat, is not on the ballot. The statement is a small hint of the heat she feels must be felt by the Yunus regime if the ban on her party is not lifted before the February 12 polls.

THE YUNUS REGIME is at this point in a state of ner­vousness regarding not only its own future but also of its election-related plans. The rising sentiment in Bangla­desh is that, having gone after a smashing of the nation’s history and an ugly campaign against the Awami League, Yunus and his people are not morally equipped to preside over any election. Which leads to the question: What happens about the February 12 polls then? What could happen is that the interim regime would eat humble pie and lift the restrictions on the Awami League which, if given the opportunity to take part in the vote, would demand a rescheduling of the electoral exercise to give it time to reorganise itself for campaigning.

Then comes the other question: How does Bangladesh deal with circumstances that will certainly arise if the February elec­tions go ahead as planned? In the first place, BNP might sneak through to a victory if the polls go ahead. But that is dependent on whether the Yunus-Jamaat-NCP-Islamist combine goes full steam into a campaign to prevent a BNP victory. The bigger real­ity is that if the February elections proceed, with the inclusivity question brushed aside by the regime, there will be little guar­antee that stability will return owing to the hollow nature of the vote. Awami League supporters as well as major segments of the electorate will stay away from the polling stations. The problem will arise, once the elections are over, of the require­ment of fresh polls for Bangladesh to wit­ness a return of legitimate government.

And that is where the role of BNP will come to the fore. If it forms the government, however weak or tentative, after February 12, it will not forget that for it to govern in a meaningful fashion it will require a return of the Awami League to the political landscape and a holding of a fresh vote that will throw up a properly representative government. All of these ideas are just up in the air, but for the country they are of grave import.

Where does all this leave the Yunus outfit? The ground has been shifting from under its feet in recent weeks. It has been rattled by the fact that Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar recently travelled to Dhaka and met Tarique Rahman to hand over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s con­dolence message on the demise of Begum Khaleda Zia but made no move to meet Yunus. It was a clear sign that New Delhi had begun to look beyond Yunus and to a democratically governed Bangladesh. It makes sense that India will expect BNP to embrace a new form of politics that will have both itself and the Awami League working towards a re-inauguration of the democratic process.

In 2026, in its preoccupation with elections, BNP will feel the need to reach out to the Awami League for a realistic political arrangement.

In 2026, Bangladesh’s minority religious denominations, es­pecially its Hindu population, will not expect any respite from the difficulties they have been in since August 2024. The killing of Hindus, indeed the atrocities perpetrated on the community over the past seventeen months, has not evoked any condemna­tion from the Yunus government, though its law affairs adviser has loudly denounced the move for a Bangladeshi cricket player to be withdrawn from an Indian Premier League team as a result of protests in India. Few if any efforts have been made to take to task the mobs that have systematically assaulted Hindu homes and families. One does not expect Bangladesh’s Hindus to feel safe in 2026. With memories of Hindus coming under countrywide attack immediately after a BNP victory over the Awami League in 2001, fears remain of the trauma they might suffer again if the February elections are held and BNP and/or its radical Islamist friends come to power.

Politics will remain uncertain in 2026. What role will Presi­dent Mohammed Shahabuddin, ignored and a virtual prisoner in the presidential palace Bangabhaban, play if conditions worsen between now and February and even beyond? At a time when inclusive elections are becoming a growing demand—a demand the Yunus regime is unwilling to accede to given its reluctance to give up power, the president, in consultation with the army—might be expected to act on the recent Supreme Court judgment restoring the constitutional provision of a care­taker government presiding over elections. The Supreme Court judgment has left people surprised because of the pronouncement that the caretaker provision will be applicable following the election immediately at hand.

The February elections, if they are held on a non-inclusive basis, will not fulfil public expectations. This is where the president, with the sup­port of the military, could invoke the argument that once the action of the Awami League government repealing the caretaker provision in 2011 was declared void by the judiciary in 2025, a caretaker government comes imme­diately into force. With fears that be­tween now and February and beyond, violence could deepen, the president could exercise his constitutional authority by announcing the requisite measures for an imme­diate implementation of the judicial verdict on the caretaker system. That will lead to two developments: the formation of a caretaker administration through consultations with the politi­cal parties and the inauguration of steps for fresh elections. The interim Yunus regime will cease to be a government.

All of these are predictions of what could happen in Bangla­desh in 2026. It is hard to foresee how conditions will pan out, for radicals and other extremists and anarchists have seized the country and have kept it in a state of unmitigated terror. With scores of policemen murdered by rioters in the aftermath of the civil disorder of August 2024 and their families unable to come by justice, with convicted criminals escaping from prison, with weapons looted from police stations and the stations later torched by criminal gangs, it is safe to put forth the thought that it will be naïve to expect Bangladesh to return to a semblance of normality in the year that has just begun. Too much has been destroyed on Yunus’ watch; the rule of law has been non-exis­tent; mobs have seized and torched media offices; journalists daring to criticise the regime have been sent to prison.

Bangladesh has been without a leader for the past seventeen months. For the nation to witness a new dawn of purposeful liberty, it is essential that new leadership wedded to secular democratic principles arise to reclaim the country from the brigandage it has fallen prey to. The year 2026 does not hold out the promise of such leadership taking charge of the country. Bangladesh’s agony will not end anytime soon.