Bangladesh Election 2026

Tarique Rahman, leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which swept to a landslide victory in last week’s parliamentary elections, has been sworn in as the country’s first elected prime minister since deadly protests in 2024, which resulted in the ouster of the previous government and its prime minister, Sheikh Hasina.

The political alliance led by Rahman’s party won 212 seats in the Jatiya Sangsad, Bangladesh’s parliament, in Thursday’s elections, leaving its main competitor, the alliance led by Jamaat-e-Islami, with 77.

On Tuesday, Rahman took his oath of office, and newly elected MPs pledged loyalty to their country inside the oath room of the parliament building as they were sworn in by Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin.

Foreign officials, among them Pakistan’s foreign minister and the speaker of India’s Parliament, were also present.

Here is what we know about the people who will be running Bangladesh’s new government:

Who are the new cabinet members?

Twenty-five full ministers in the new cabinet took their oaths during a separate ceremony in Dhaka on Tuesday afternoon. The 25 have been drawn overwhelmingly from the BNP and its close allies.

Among the state (junior) ministers appointed to Rahman’s government are Nurul Haque and Zonayed Saki, first-time parliamentarians, who were prominent voices during the 2024 protests.

While members of the cabinet have been announced, the ministries they will be responsible for have not yet been confirmed. Here’s a look at who some of them are.

Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir

Alamgir, who has served as secretary-general of the BNP since 2016, was elected to his seat in parliament by the constituency of Thakurgaon-1, a district in northwestern Bangladesh.

Alamgir, 78, served as a member of parliament from 2001 to 2006 under the previous BNP government, led by Rahman’s late mother, Khaleda Zia, during which he was also state minister for agriculture and later for civil aviation and tourism.

After the end of that government’s term, a caretaker administration took over until elections in 2008, which Alamgir stood in but did not win. He remained a senior member of the BNP outside parliament.

In October 2023, Alamgir was detained by police the day after mass antigovernment protests swept through Dhaka when Hasina’s Awami League party was in power. The police said he had been detained for questioning in connection with the violence that erupted during those demonstrations.

When the BNP win was announced last week, Alamgir hailed the victory and called the BNP “a party of the people”.

Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury

Chowdhury was elected from the Chattogram-11 constituency, which covers the Bandar and Patenga areas of Chattogram city in southeastern Bangladesh.

From 2001 to 2004, Chowdhury served as minister of commerce under the previous BNP administration. He is a member of the BNP’s standing committee.

Before last week’s vote, Chowdhury said that if elected, the BNP would govern by investing in people, “in health, in education and upskilling” and by supporting “artisans, the weavers” and small industries with credit as well as helping them access international markets, including by helping them with their branding.

Iqbal Hasan Mahmud Tuku

Tuku, 75, has been elected as a member of parliament for the Sirajganj-2 constituency in North Bengal.

Tuku is a member of the BNP Standing Committee, the party’s top policymaking body.

He is a veteran BNP figure who has been elected to parliament multiple times and has held important party roles. From 2001 to 2006, he served as the state minister for power. In 2006, he also briefly served as the state minister for agriculture.

In 2007, during the military-backed interim government, a special anticorruption court in Dhaka sentenced Tuku to nine years in prison in a case filed against him by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC). The ACC accused Tuku of concealing information about assets worth 49.6 million takas (roughly $400,000).

The High Court upheld his conviction and jail sentence in 2023 after a lengthy appeal process. However, in September 2025, a year after the overthrow of the Awami League government, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court acquitted Tuku.

Khalilur Rahman

Khalilur Rahman is a technocratic minister, appointed for his expertise rather than as a party politician. He is not a member of parliament.

He served as national security adviser in the interim administration headed by Muhammad Yunus, which took over to oversee a transition after Hasina’s ouster.

He also served as the government’s representative for the Rohingya issue during Yunus’s tenure. The refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar in southern Bangladesh are sheltering more than one million Rohingya refugees, most of whom fled Myanmar in 2017 to escape a military crackdown.

Afroza Khanam Rita

The only woman cabinet minister, Rita is a first-time member of parliament but comes from a political family: Her late father was a four-times MP. Rita is also the chairwoman of the Monno Group of Industries, a conglomerate whose firms produce ceramic ware, textiles and agricultural machinery – primarily for export.

Asaduzzaman

Asaduzzaman, was elected from the Jhenaidah-1 (Shailkupa) constituency, which covers Shailkupa upazila in Jhenaidah district in southwestern Bangladesh.

Dipen Dewan

Dewan, 62, a Chakma Buddhist leader, is expected to be named minister of Chittagong Hill Tracts affairs. Dewan won from the Rangamati constituency.

Chakma Buddhists are an ethnic group of Tibeto-Burman speaking people. They are indigenous to the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh and parts of northeastern India.

Nitai Roy Chowdhury

Chowdhury, a Hindu leader, is widely expected to become the minister of cultural affairs.

Chowdhury, 77, has served as a senior adviser and strategist for the BNP’s top leaders.

How significant are these appointments?

During campaigning, the BNP pledged to meet the people’s demand for an elected government with real legitimacy. Therefore, ministers and cabinet members can expect a significant amount of scrutiny, experts said.

Khandakar Tahmid Rejwan, lecturer in global studies and governance at the Independent University, Bangladesh, told Al Jazeera: “The appointees in their respective fields will also face an invisible yet significant pressure to prove themselves more effective and distinctive than the previous administrations, both the interim government and, of course, the Awami League-led government under Sheikh Hasina.”

He added: “It will be particularly interesting to observe whether, after a youth-led mass uprising, the core of executive power is taken over by the old guard or by new faces that reflect diversity in terms of age, gender, ethnicity and religion.”

While two prominent figures from the 2024 student uprisings have been named as state ministers – Nurul Haque and Zonayed Saki – Rejwan added that leaders of the student-led National Citizen Party, which was founded after the 2024 uprising, had made a “strategic mistake” by allying with Jamaat instead of the BNP.

“They had the option to form an alliance with the BNP, which they later abandoned in favour of Jamaat. Given these political dynamics, it is unlikely that any student leaders will receive cabinet positions.”

Who attended the ceremony to swear in the new cabinet?

Several foreign delegations were in Bangladesh to attend the ceremony.

They included Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu and Bhutanese Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay.

India was represented by Om Birla, the speaker of its lower house in Parliament. Pakistani Federal Minister for Planning Ahsan Iqbal also attended.

Leaders and representatives from Nepal and the United Kingdom, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Brunei were among those who were invited to attend.

‘Let the practice of democracy continue,’ said Yunus, who has overseen the country’s post-uprising transition since 2024.

Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus has announced he is resigning to pave way for a new government elected several days ago.

Speaking in a farewell broadcast to the nation on Monday, Yunus said the interim government he oversees “is stepping down”.

“But let the practice of democracy, freedom of speech, and fundamental rights that has begun not be halted,” he said.

An 85-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, Yunus returned from self-imposed exile in August 2024 to serve as Bangladesh’s chief adviser after a student-led uprising toppled the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Bangladesh held its first general elections since that uprising on February 12, and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Tarique Rahman, won a landslide victory.

Rahman, a scion of one of the country’s most powerful political dynasties, is set to serve as prime minister of the incoming government when it is sworn in on Tuesday, according to Bangladeshi media.

Yunus praised the recent elections, which European Union observers called “credible and competently managed” as a “benchmark for future elections”.

“The people, voters, political parties, and stakeholder institutions linked to the election have set a commendable example,” Yunus said.

‘We must remain united’

Rahman’s BNP-led alliance won at least 212 seats in the 300-seat parliament, giving it a strong mandate to lead. In second place was the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which won 77 seats, positioning it as the main opposition party. Hasina’s Awami League party was barred from participating.

Rahman appealed for unity in the wake of his party’s victory, saying “our paths and opinions may differ, but in the interest of the country, we must remain united”.

In addition to electing their new representatives, Bangladeshi voters also endorsed sweeping democratic reforms in a national referendum.

The lengthy document of reforms, known as the “July Charter” after the month when the uprising that toppled Hasina began, proposes term limits for prime ministers, the creation of an upper house of parliament, stronger presidential powers and greater judicial independence. It enshrines a key pillar of Yunus’s post-uprising transition agenda.

The referendum noted that approval would make the charter “binding on the parties that win” the election, obliging them to endorse it.

“Sweeping away the ruins, we rebuilt institutions and set the course for reforms,” said Yunus, praising the reforms.

However, several parties raised questions before the vote, and the reforms will still require ratification by the new parliament.

“The challenge now is to ensure good governance, law and order, and public safety, and to establish a rights-based state, which was at the heart of the aspirations of the 2024 mass uprising,” Rezaul Karim Rony, a Dhaka-based political analyst, told Al Jazeera.

The landmark Bangladesh election held last week was ⁠triggered by a Gen Z-led uprising in 2024, yet a youth-led National Citizen Party (NCP) – born out of the uprising – managed to secure only six parliamentary seats out of the 297, the results of which are available.

The results, officially declared on Saturday, showed that voters overwhelmingly chose the long-established Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which comfortably defeated a Jamaat-e-Islami-led alliance, of which the NCP is a key partner.

Tarique Rahman of the BNP, which has already governed the country three times, most recently from 2001 to 2006, is set to become prime minister following one of the most consequential elections in the country’s history.

Many young Bangladeshis who voted for the first time described the election as historic, but falling short of their expectations.

“As Generation Z, we didn’t get the expected representation and results after shedding so much blood and losing lives,” student Afsana Hossain Himi told Al Jazeera.

“Still, we are very hopeful. We have representatives from the younger generation, and we hope they will do something good,” she said, referring to the six NCP winners.

Many young Bangladeshis felt the NCP failed to build up a big enough support base in time for ‌the vote.

“They did not live up to the hopes and dreams people had after the 2024 uprising,” 23-year-old university student Sohanur Rahman said. “The NCP’s alignment with Jamaat felt like a betrayal, and many young voters like us chose not to support them.”

NCP spokesperson Asif Mahmud said the ⁠party would rebuild itself in opposition and focus on local government elections due in a year.

‘A new beginning’

The South Asian country of 173 million people has one of the world’s youngest populations, with approximately 44 percent of its vote bank – 56 million – between the ages of 18 and 37.

The election outcome is widely seen as a chance to restore stability after months of upheaval that followed the 2024 uprising, which toppled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Security forces at the time, acting on her orders, killed more than 1,400 people, according to the United Nations. Hasina has since been handed a death sentence in absentia for the crackdown.

Hasina, currently living in exile in New Delhi, and Rahman’s mother, Khaleda Zia, have for decades towered over the country’s political landscape. Rahman’s father, Ziaur Rahman, a key figure in Bangladesh’s independence struggle, also led the nation from 1977 until his assassination in 1981.

Rahman, who is likely to be sworn in on Tuesday, has pledged that his administration will prioritise the rule of law.

“Our position is clear. Peace and order must be maintained at any cost. No wrongdoing or unlawful activity will be tolerated,” he said at a news conference on Saturday. “Regardless of party, religion, race, or differing opinions, under no circumstances will attacks by the strong against the weak be accepted. Justice will be our guiding principle.”

Shakil Ahmed, a government and politics professor at Jahangirnagar University, said ⁠the Jamaat-NCP alliance pushed away young voters who had wanted a new political class after the fall of Hasina.

“Many saw it as a retreat into old politics rather than a break from it,” Ahmed said. “This decision divided the youth vote and strengthened support for the BNP under Tarique Rahman, which appeared more organised and capable of governing.”

However, for student Farhan Ullash, the vote felt like a long-awaited break with the past.

“After all, the election was a kind of dream for us, a new beginning for Bangladesh,” he said. “I know already BNP is going to make the government. I hope they will listen to us.”

“In the interest of the country, we must remain united.” Bangladeshi Prime Minister-in-waiting Tarique Rahman urged opposition parties to work with the incoming BNP government after its landslide victory in the first elections since Sheikh Hasina’s ouster.

In the end, the 13th parliamentary election in Bangladesh was not a revolution. It was a reckoning.

When the ballots were counted, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) had secured a decisive victory, returning to power after years in the political wilderness under Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule.

Most headlines framed it as a dramatic comeback, and rightfully so. But beneath the surface, this was less a tidal wave of voter choice than a carefully navigated current. This was a contest shaped by frustration and the arithmetic of first-past-the-post (FPTP).

To understand why BNP prevailed, one must first dispense with the lazy narrative that this was a Jamaat moment squandered. When the results became clear, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) secured 68 seats, while the Jamaat-led bloc secured 77 seats in parliament. That is no small feat for a party whose previous best parliamentary showing was just 18 seats in 1991. Many analysts had suggested Jamaat’s support had grown in the run-up to the poll, and the data vindicated that claim. But in an FPTP system, a swelling vote share does not automatically translate into 151 seats out of 300 elected constituencies.

This election was not driven by any momentous revolution, even though it came on the back of a mass uprising that toppled Hasina’s autocracy in August 2024. But there was no deep ideological rupture, and no permanent reordering of voter loyalties, at least not on a scale that would rupture the very fabric of the country’s electoral mindset.

And of course, it was not a national wave election, in which a single mood sweeps towards a particular party across class, gender and region. What unfolded was a hybrid: Largely a normal election with significant deviations, but a predictable outcome.

Party loyalists mostly stayed home. Swing voters mattered. And in pockets of the country, frustration with BNP’s local leadership triggered temporary defections – many of them to Jamaat or NCP.

The anger was real. After August 5, BNP’s grassroots machinery performed abysmally. Petty leaders across districts were accused of corruption and extortion. In rural market towns and urban peripheries, resentment simmered.

Voters were not merely disappointed; they were, to use the language heard in tea stalls and union parishad courtyards, “really, really pissed off”. That fury explains Jamaat’s surge. A portion of BNP loyalists and a significant share of swing voters drifted towards the promise of an “honest alternative”.

But drift is not destiny.

BNP’s base, historically broader and organisationally deeper than Jamaat’s, did not collapse. Even after defections, it remained numerically larger. BNP’s nomination strategy proved unexpectedly shrewd.

Where Jamaat fielded relatively unknown but ideologically trusted figures, BNP leaned on its old guard – candidates with entrenched name recognition and dense informal networks.

That mattered, particularly in rural Bangladesh. Urban, educated voters may be thrilled by the rhetoric of ethical governance. For them, the idea of an incorruptible, ideologically disciplined candidate resonates as a moral reset.

But rural voters are pragmatic actors. They operate within intricate patronage webs. An MP is not an abstraction; he (and it is usually he) is a broker of safety nets, jobs, stability and dispute resolution. Honesty, in isolation, does not guarantee access. Familiarity does.

Thus emerged the central voter dilemma. Disgusted with BNP’s excesses, many considered a switch. In constituencies where Jamaat fielded a well-known leader, some made it. But elsewhere, voters encountered candidates they did not know, whose “honesty” they could not verify, and whose party offered little beyond moral branding.

Faced with uncertainty, they chose the “devil” they knew.

Jamaat compounded its structural limitations with strategic missteps. Its awkward posture on women’s issues – oscillating between reassurance and dog whistles – failed to convince large segments of female voters who have, over decades, carved out expanding public roles.

Bangladesh’s social transformation is not cosmetic, and women are central to its labour force, education system and microcredit economy. A party that cannot articulate a credible vision for gender equality cannot win a national wave.

More damaging was Jamaat’s revisionist flirtation with the memory of 1971. The Liberation War is the country’s moral founding document. Attempts to soften or reinterpret Jamaat’s historical role alienated voters far beyond the secular-liberal elite.

Even conservative families drew red lines around 1971. The prevailing mode of public sentiment was probably blunt: One may forgive; one does not forget.

Yet Jamaat’s performance was still historic. Jamaat-e-Islami and its allied coalition secured 77 seats, a testament not only to its disciplined cadre but also to BNP’s own misdeeds. Extortion scandals and local arrogance pushed voters into Jamaat’s arms.

In a tightly contested FPTP landscape, even a few percentage points can flip dozens of seats. Jamaat capitalised on that anger with precision in Rajshahi, Khulna and Rangpur divisions, where its organisational muscle is strongest.

But precision is not the same as breadth. Jamaat’s surge remained regionally concentrated. Its support varied sharply by class, gender, education and age. That is the opposite of a wave election. Without uniform national momentum, being a victor in FPTP is not an easy task.

Then there was the ghost in the machine: The Awami League (AL). Much commentary underestimated its residual vote. Surveys suggested a hardcore 5 to 7 percent would never defect, but beyond that lay a larger bloc – perhaps 20 to 25 percent – either undecided or unwilling to disclose preferences. In this election, that particular bloc mattered a lot.

Pre-election field research and multiple polls indicated that many non-hardcore AL voters were breaking towards the BNP – probably not out of ideological alignment but out of instrumental rationality. They believed BNP would form the government and wanted access to services through the winning MP.

In areas where BNP’s old guard had harassed AL supporters, some abstained or flirted with Jamaat. But nationally, the gravitational pull favoured BNP. Voters wanted to be on the side of the winner. Perception became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The four plausible scenarios before election day clarified the stakes. Without significant AL turnout, BNP would likely secure a plurality in a tight race. With moderate AL support, it would win a comfortable majority. With overwhelming AL backing, even a two-thirds majority was conceivable. Only a full-blown Jamaat wave – a cross-class, cross-gender national embrace – could have reversed the equation.

That wave never materialised.

BNP’s victory, then, is a product of structural advantage, strategic candidate selection and the rational calculations of the country’s traditional voters. It was aided by Jamaat’s self-inflicted wounds on women’s rights and historical memory. It was enabled, paradoxically, by BNP’s own local misconduct, which inflated Jamaat’s vote share but not enough to overcome FPTP mathematics.

One more footnote of this election deserves attention: The emergence of the National Citizen Party (NCP), which captured five seats. For a new party born out of an uprising, in the highly polarised political environment of the South Asian nation, that is no small accomplishment.

It signals a hunger, however modest, for alternatives outside the new binary of BNP and Jamaat. Under proportional representation, such a party might flourish. Under FPTP, five seats is both a breakthrough and a ceiling.

Bangladesh’s 13th parliamentary election was, in the end, a story of limits: The limits of anger, the limits of moral branding, the limits of revisionism, and the enduring power of organisational depth in a winner-take-all system.

BNP won not because it inspired a nation, but because it understood it.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has claimed victory in the country’s first election since a student-led uprising that ousted longtime leader Sheikh Hasina in 2024.

Unofficial results confirmed by election officials to Al Jazeera on Friday showed the BNP winning 209 seats, easily crossing the 151-seat threshold needed for a majority in parliament.

Its leader, Tarique Rahman, the son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, is now set to become the country’s next prime minister. BNP officials said the party expected to form a government by Sunday.

The BNP was followed by Jamaat-e-Islami, which secured 68 seats in Thursday’s polls – its highest-ever tally.

The party, which is led by Shafiqur Rahman and contested for the first time since a 2013 ban that was lifted after Hasina’s ouster, said it is not “satisfied” with the vote count and raised “serious questions about the integrity of the results process”.

The National Citizen Party (NCP), led by youth activists instrumental in toppling Hasina and part of a Jamaat-led alliance, won just six of the 30 seats that it contested.

The Election Commission has yet to formally announce the final tally, which is expected either later on Friday or on Saturday.

Turnout stood at almost 60 percent of registered voters, according to the Election Commission, well over the nearly 42 percent in the last election in 2024.

The election featured a record number of parties, more than 50, and at least 2,000 candidates, many of them independents. The parliament comprises 350 lawmakers, with 50 seats reserved for women.

More than 127 million people were eligible to cast their votes, with many expressing enthusiasm for what was widely seen as Bangladesh’s first competitive vote in years.

An interim government led by Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus, 85, has been in office since Hasina fled to India in 2024 after widespread protests led largely by young people, who were killed in their hundreds by security forces.

Tarique Rahman, who has never held government office, returned to Bangladesh in December after 17 years of self-imposed exile in the United Kingdom. The 60-year-old has yet to comment on the unofficial results but on Friday, he waved from his car as he left his house in the capital, Dhaka, for a mosque.

In a statement, the BNP asked people to refrain from large celebrations and offer special prayers instead.

“Despite winning … by a large margin of votes, no celebratory procession or rally shall be organised,” the party said in a statement.

‘Litmus test’

The 78-year-old former leader, Hasina, was sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity for the bloody crackdown on protesters during her final months in power, and remains in hiding in India. Her Awami League party was barred from the election.

BNP members have said the party would formally request Hasina’s extradition from India. In its manifesto, the BNP promised to prioritise job creation, protect low-income and marginal households and ensure fair prices to farmers. Tarique Rahman has also promised to revive a stagnant economy, reset ties with countries in the region and crack down on corruption.

Abbas Faiz, an independent South Asia researcher, said the election was a test of how Bangladesh was “ready for democracy”.

“Also, a test of the political parties which have been able to take part in the elections. They have actually understood the aspirations and the wishes of the people of their country for the removal of corrupt practices in the administration and parliament,” Faiz told Al Jazeera.

He added the election is the “litmus test” which puts responsibility on the “shoulders of the new government”.

But Faiz explained that the election would have been “fairer” if all parties, including the Awami League, were allowed to participate.

“But in a way, the problem lies with the Awami League itself, because it did not reimage itself as a party that could be trusted by the general populace in Bangladesh,” he said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the US ambassador to Bangladesh, Brent T Christensen, were among the first to congratulate Rahman on his party’s victory. China’s embassy in Dhaka also congratulated the BNP over its election showing.

The election commission also said some 48 million ‌voters chose “Yes” ‌while about 23 million said “No” in a referendum on constitutional reforms held alongside the election, though there was no official word on the outcome.

The changes include two-term limits for prime ministers and stronger judicial independence and women’s representation, while providing for neutral interim governments during election periods and setting up a second house of the 300-seat parliament.

Fahmida Khatun, an economist and executive director of the Dhaka-based Centre for Policy Dialogue, told Al Jazeera that early signals support the perception of a credible election.

Although heavy security was reported across polling stations, “broadly, the voting was peaceful”, Khatun said, pointing to the voter turnout figure as an indicator of healthy participation.

“This indicates citizens wanted to exercise their voting rights and they wanted to choose their own people,” she added.

Several hundred international observers monitored Thursday’s voting, with the European Union’s Election Observation Mission expected to issue a preliminary report on its findings on Sunday.

Votes are still being tallied, but unofficial results in the Bangladesh election suggest that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party is ‘clearly leading’. Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury provides an update from Dhaka.

Bangladesh’s leading political candidates have voted in a closely contested general election in Dhaka, pitting the Bangladesh Nationalist Party against a Jamaat-e-Islami-led coalition. It’s the country’s first election since the 2024 ousting of long‑time premier Sheikh Hasina in a Gen Z-led uprising.

The vote is a direct contest between frontrunner Tarique Rahman’s BNP and a Jamaat-e-Islami-led coalition of 11 parties.

Dhaka, Bangladesh – On Wednesday evening in Dhaka, Shafiqur Rahman, the emir (chief) of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, unveiled an ambitious election manifesto. A key promise: If his party wins the country’s February 12 election, it would lay the ground for Bangladesh to quadruple its gross domestic product (GDP) to $2 trillion by 2040.

Addressing politicians and diplomats, the 67-year-old Rahman pledged investment in technology-driven agriculture, manufacturing, information technology, education and healthcare, alongside higher foreign investment and increased public spending.

Economists in Dhaka have cast doubt on whether sweeping promises can be financed, describing the manifesto as heavy on slogans but short on detail. But for Jamaat’s leadership, the manifesto is less about fiscal arithmetic than signalling intent, say analysts.

For years, critics have tried to portray Jamaat, Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party, as driven too much by religious doctrine to be able to govern a young, diverse, forward-looking population. The manifesto, by contrast, presents a party long excluded from power as a credible alternative – and as a force that sees no contradiction between its religious foundations and the modern future that Bangladeshis aspire to.

His audience was telling too.

Until recently, Bangladesh’s business elites and foreign diplomats either kept their distance from Jamaat or engaged with it discreetly. Now, they are doing so openly.

Over the past few months, European, Western, and even Indian diplomats have sought meetings with Rahman, a figure who, until not long ago, was seen by many internationally as almost politically untouchable.

For a leader whose party has been banned twice, including by ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s administration, the coming election is raising a question few would have dared to ask even a year ago: Could Shafiqur Rahman become Bangladesh’s next prime minister?

‘I will fight for the people’

The shift in how Jamaat and its leader are being viewed is at least partly to do with a political vacuum that has opened up in Bangladesh.

The July 2024 uprising that ousted Sheikh Hasina did more than end her long rule. It upended the country’s political order, hollowing out the familiar duopoly that for decades defined Bangladeshi politics – the rivalry between Hasina’s Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

With the Awami League effectively barred from the political field and the BNP the only big party left standing, a vacuum emerged. Many initially assumed it would be filled by the student-led National Citizen Party (NCP). Instead, Jamaat – long pushed to the margins – moved to occupy the space.

As Bangladesh heads towards a high-stakes election in less than two weeks, Jamaat has now emerged as one of the country’s two most prominent political forces. Some pre-election polls now place it in direct competition with the BNP.

At the centre of that transformation is Rahman, according to Ahsanul Mahboob Zubair, Jamaat’s assistant secretary-general and a longtime associate of the party chief.

Zubair, who worked closely with Rahman when he led Jamaat in the country’s Sylhet region, said the resurgence is the result of years of grassroots social work and political survival under repression.

Rahman, a soft-spoken former government doctor, took over as Jamaat’s chief in 2019, at a time when the party was banned under Hasina. In December 2022, he was arrested in the middle of the night on charges of supporting militancy and was released only after 15 months when he secured bail.

In March 2025, months after the student-led protest had overthrown Hasina and an interim government under Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus had taken office, Rahman’s name was dropped from the list of accused in the case.

Since then, his carefully calibrated, emotional public appearances have drawn wide attention.

At a massive rally in Dhaka last July, Rahman collapsed twice on stage due to heat-related illness but returned to finish his speech, defying doctors’ advice.

“As long as Allah grants me life, I will fight for the people,” he told the crowd, barely sitting on the stage, supported by the doctors. “If Jamaat is elected, we will be servants, not owners. No minister will take plots or tax-free cars. There will be no extortion, no corruption. I want to tell the youth clearly – we are with you.”

Reinventing Jamaat’s image

Supporters describe Shafiqur Rahman as approachable and morally grounded – a leader who prefers disaster zones to drawing rooms, and projects calm in a country exhausted by confrontation.

Now in his third term as chief, Rahman commands firm authority inside the party.

“He is a good and pious man. Everyone in the party trusts him,” said Lokman Hossain, a Jamaat supporter in Dhaka. He said that over the past year and a half, the party has reached far more people than before, with Rahman’s appeal beyond Jamaat’s traditional base playing a central role.

Rahman’s challenge, however, is no longer purely electoral – it is reputational.

As new supporters drift towards Jamaat, he is attempting to reframe how the party is seen: less as an Islamic force defined by doctrine and history, and more as a vehicle for clean governance, discipline and change.

Whether this reinvention is substantive or merely cosmetic will define both Rahman’s leadership and Jamaat’s future, say analysts.

Any attempt to recast Jamaat’s public image, however, runs up against the unresolved legacy of 1971. For decades, the party’s role during Bangladesh’s war of independence – when it sided with Pakistan – and the subsequent trials and executions of several senior leaders have shaped perceptions of Jamaat at home and abroad.

Rahman has approached that history with caution. He has avoided detailed admissions but has recently acknowledged what he calls Jamaat’s “past mistakes”, asking forgiveness if the party caused harm.

The language marks a subtle shift from outright denial, while stopping short of naming specific actions or responsibilities. Supporters say this reflects political realism rather than evasion – an attempt to move the party beyond its dark chapter. Critics, by contrast, see the ambiguity as deliberate, arguing it softens Jamaat’s image without confronting the substance of its past.

“He knows what those mistakes were,” said Saleh Uddin Ahmed, a United States-based Bangladeshi academic and political analyst. “But stating them explicitly would destabilise his leadership inside the party.”

Ahmed nonetheless considers Rahman more moderate than Jamaat’s previous leaders, noting his relative willingness to discuss unresolved historical questions and address issues such as women’s rights – topics the party long avoided. “This opening up is also happening because of increased public and media scrutiny,” Ahmed said. “People are asking questions now, and Jamaat has to respond.”

Jamaat’s effort to reach voters beyond its traditional base and reassure foreign audiences, while retaining the loyalty of its conservative supporters, has created a persistent tension – one that has often resulted in dual messaging.

That balancing act has been evident in public statements by senior leaders. Abdullah Md Taher, one of Rahman’s closest aides, in an interview with Al Jazeera, said Jamaat is a moderate party, adding that it would not impose or strictly adhere to Islamic law.

The party has also, for the first time in its history, nominated a Hindu candidate.

Yet when addressing conservative supporters, the party continues to emphasise its Islamic identity, with some backers encouraging votes for Jamaat as an act of religious merit – a practice the rival BNP has criticised as the misuse of religious sentiment.

The strategy appears to have helped Jamaat re-enter political conversations that were once closed to it. At the same time, it has sharpened doubts about how far Rahman is willing – or able – to go in reinterpreting the party’s past and ideology as he courts a broader electorate.

Those limits are most visible in Jamaat’s stance on women and leadership. They came into sharp focus during his Al Jazeera interview in which Shafiqur Rahman said it was not possible for a woman to hold the party’s top position – a remark that reignited longstanding criticism of Jamaat’s gender politics, despite its attempts to project a more inclusive image.

“Allah has made everyone with a distinct nature. A man cannot bear a child or breastfeed,” Rahman said. “There are physical limitations that cannot be denied. When a mother gives birth, how will she carry out these responsibilities? It is not possible.”

Critics argue that the stance exposes the limits of Jamaat’s claims of moderation.

Mubashar Hasan, an adjunct researcher at the Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative at Western Sydney University in Australia and author of Narratives of Bangladesh, also questioned Jamaat’s internal culture, noting that even female leaders who publicly endorse such views operate within a male-dominated hierarchy. He was referring to the party’s large number of female supporters and members, including women within its Majlis-e-Shura, the highest decision-making body. “It reflects a structure where women follow what men say in that party,” he said.

The criticism carries particular weight given the movement that helped reopen political space for Jamaat itself. The July 2024 uprising against Hasina, analysts note, saw extensive participation by women, often at the front lines of protest. “Women were part of that movement as much as men, if not more,” Hasan said. “Undermining them now gives Jamaat a deeply problematic outlook.”

Political historians argue this is not a new contradiction but a longstanding one. Since contesting elections under its own symbol in 1986, Jamaat has never fielded a woman candidate for a general parliamentary seat, relying instead on reserved quotas.

“This isn’t a temporary position or a tactical lapse,” said political historian and author Mohiuddin Ahmad.“It reflects the party’s ideological structure, and that structure has not fundamentally changed.”

The ‘grandfather’ expanding Jamaat’s reach

Yet among Jamaat supporters – particularly younger ones – the issue is often filtered through loyalty to Rahman himself rather than doctrine.

During his recent nationwide campaign, young supporters can frequently be heard calling Shafiqur Rahman “dadu” – grandfather. White-bearded, soft-spoken and visibly attentive to supporters, Rahman fits the image.

“He connects with young people through his words,” said Abdullah Al Maruf, a Gen Z law student from Chattogram and a Jamaat supporter. “There is something about his recent work that feels like the relationship between a grandfather and his grandchildren. Where BNP leaders often belittle young people, Shafiqur speaks to them with respect.”

Maruf added that Rahman’s appeal extends beyond Jamaat’s traditional base. “Outside the usual Jamaat circle, he is more popular than previous Jamaat leaders,” he said.

Zubair, Jamaat’s assistant secretary-general, described the party’s outreach beyond traditional voters – such as the decision to nominate a Hindu candidate – not as a tactical move but one rooted in Jamaat’s constitutional framework rather than political expediency.

“Our constitution allows any Bangladeshi, regardless of religion, to be part of the party if they support our political, economic and social policies,” he said. “Supporting our religious doctrine is not a requirement for political participation.”

Jamaat leaders argue the move reflects a broader effort to shift the party’s public image – from one defined primarily by theology to one centred on governance and accountability. “We are emphasising corruption-free politics, discipline and public service,” Zubair said. “People have seen our leaders stand with them during floods, during COVID, and during the July uprising. That is why support is growing.”

Krishna Nandi, the party’s Hindu candidate from the city of Khulna, agrees. “When families fall into poverty, Jamaat-linked welfare networks step in without asking about religion or political loyalty. This culture of service explains why many citizens see Jamaat not as a party of slogans but as a party of discipline, structure and responsibility,” Nandi wrote for Al Jazeera.

The Jamaat’s outreach has also extended well beyond domestic audiences. Zubair said the party’s leadership has held meetings with Indian diplomats in Dhaka who paid a courtesy visit to Shafiqur when he was ill. Jamaat figures were invited to India’s 77th Republic Day reception at the Indian High Commission last month – an unprecedented step.

European and Western diplomats, he added, have also sought engagements with Rahman in recent months. That shift has been mirrored in Washington. In a leaked audio recording reported by The Washington Post, a US diplomat was quoted as saying American officials wanted to “be friends” with the Jamaat, asking journalists whether members of the party’s influential student wing might be willing to appear in their programmes.

As Jamaat’s international engagement expands – and as it emerges as a serious electoral force alongside frontrunner BNP – many general supporters express confidence in Rahman’s leadership.

“He is a patriot,” said Abul Kalam, a voter in Rahman’s Dhaka constituency. “Whether as prime minister or opposition leader, he will lead us well.”

What lies next for the party is unclear. But analysts say that irrespective of the outcome of the elections, Rahman’s stature within Jamaat – and beyond, in Bangladesh – appears resolute.

“Shafiqur Rahman is an experienced politician and is frequently in the headlines,” Ahmad, the political historian, said. “His political thinking is not yet fully clear, but his grip over the party is evident.”

An array of political parties and alliances will be vying for seats in the Bangladesh Parliament on February 12 in the country’s first election since the ousting of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2024. About 127 million registered voters are eligible to cast votes to elect 350 members of the Jatiya Sangsad, the country’s parliament.

The South Asian country has been in the hands of a caretaker government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus since August 2024, when a student-led uprising ended Hasina’s long rule. Hasina ordered troops to crack down on protesters, killing 1,400 people. She has since been sentenced to death by a special tribunal in Bangladesh for the brutal crackdown, but remains in exile in India, and her Awami League party has been banned from political activity.

Besides the election on February 12, Bangladesh will also hold a referendum on the July National Charter 2025 – a document drafted following the student protests, setting the foundation for future governance of the country.

The two biggest groups competing for parliamentary seats across the country’s 300 constituencies are the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which is leading a coalition of 10 parties, and Jamaat-e-Islami (JIB), which heads an 11-party alliance, including the National Citizen Party, a group formed by students who led the anti-Hasina movement in 2024. The Awami League, which dominated Bangladeshi politics for decades, has been barred from fielding candidates.

Besides the two main blocs, the Islami Andolan Bangladesh, which broke away from the JIB-led alliance, and the Jatiya Party, a longtime ally of Hasina’s Awami League, are contesting independently.

Here is a look at the main political parties and their leaders vying for parliament seats this year, and the key players influencing the election.

Bangladesh Nationalist Party

Led by Tarique Rahman, the son of the late former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, the BNP is seen as one of the main contenders in the upcoming elections.

The party was founded in 1978 by Ziaur Rahman, Tarique’s father and one of the leading military figures of the country’s independence war against Pakistan in 1971, on the principles of Bangladeshi nationalism. According to the BNP website, this is an “ideology that recognises the right of Bangladeshis from all walks of life, irrespective of their ethnicity, gender or race”.

As a centre-right political party, the BNP has been a popular political force in the country for decades and has traditionally exchanged power with the Awami League.

For four decades after Ziaur Rahman’s assassination in 1981, his wife and Tarique’s father, Khaleda Zia, led the party. Khaleda served as the country’s first female prime minister from 1991 to 1996 and again from 2001 to 2006. In that period, Jamaat was an ally of the BNP as they together fought against Hasina’s Awami League.

After Hasina came back to power in 2009 – she had also ruled between 1996 and 2001 –  the BNP faced the wrath of her government over corruption charges, and Khaleda was put under house arrest in 2018 in two related cases. She was acquitted of all charges after Hasina’s departure in 2024.

Since Hasina’s ousting in 2024, the BNP has risen again as a political frontrunner. A December survey by the United States-based International Republican Institute indicated the BNP had the support of 33 percent of respondents. That was also the only month when the BNP — seeking to position itself as a liberal force ahead of the elections — broke its alliance with Jamaat. Polls show Jamaat just marginally behind the BNP in popular support.

Tarique, 60, had been living in London, United Kingdom, since he fled Bangladesh in 2008 over what he called politically motivated persecution. He arrived in Dhaka on December 25, 2025 to take over the BNP leadership ahead of his mother Khaleda’s death on December 30.

“We will build a Bangladesh that a mother dreams of,” he said in December after returning to the country and calling on citizens from the hills and plains – Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians – to join him in creating a secure and inclusive nation.

In election rallies, he has pledged to improve the country’s infrastructure, among other promises.

“If elected, the healthcare system will be improved, a flyover will be constructed in Sherpur, permanent embankments will be built in the river erosion areas of Dhunat, and the youth will be made self-reliant through the establishment of IT education institutions,” he said.

According to Khandakar Tahmid Rejwan, lecturer in global studies and governance at the Independent University, Bangladesh, since Rahman’s return, the BNP has become more organised.

“The party has basically revived with a newfound spirit in both its central and grassroots-level leadership,” he said.

“Typical objections against BNP and affiliated party activists, like [allegations of] extortion … have also significantly declined. Top leaders of the central committee have also been comparatively cautious to avoid any statement that might create popular outrage. Significantly, the people are flocking in thousands to hear from Rahman at his electoral rally, even late at midnight,” he said.

Rejwan added that it is widely believed that Rahman is the only man who can currently unite Bangladesh with an “inclusive vision”, unlike his Jamaat rivals, who have failed to address any clear stance or acknowledge what are seen by many as their restrictive policies towards women and religious minorities.

Jamaat-e-Islami

The party was founded in 1941 by Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi during British rule in India.

In 1971, during Bangladesh’s war of independence, Jamaat supported staying with Pakistan, and was banned after the country won its freedom.

But in 1979, four years after the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who had fought for Bangladesh’s independence and is seen by many as the country’s founding father, BNP founder Ziaur Rahman, who was the country’s president at the time, lifted the ban. Ziaur Rahman was also assassinated in 1981.

Over the next two decades, Jamaat developed into a significant political force. It supported the BNP-led coalition in 1991 and 2001.

But while Hasina was in power from 2009 until she was toppled in student-led protests in 2024 and fled to India, five top Jamaat leaders were executed, while others were jailed for crimes committed during the independence war of 1971. The party was barred in 2013 from running in elections.

In June 2025, the country’s Supreme Court restored the party’s registration, paving the way for its participation in elections.

While Jamaat no longer has an alliance with the BNP, its current leader, 67-year-old Shafiqur Rahman, has also focused on reorganising the party into a strong contender in the election.

Speaking at an election rally in Jamalpur city on Sunday, Shafiqur Rahman said the upcoming election “will be a turning point”.

“It is an election to end the cries of the families of martyrs. It is an election to bury the rotten politics of the past,” he said, according to The Daily Star newspaper.

But his party’s resurgence has also prompted debate over whether Bangladesh is prepared to be led by an Islamist force, which some fear could seek to enforce Islamic law or try to restrict women’s rights and freedoms.

However, Jamaat has rejected such fears and has told reporters it is focusing on expanding its electoral power. Last December, the party announced an alliance with the National Citizen Party, founded by 2024 leaders of the student-led uprising, and with the Liberal Democratic Party, led by 1971 war hero Oli Ahmad.

For the first time in its history, Jamaat is also fielding a Hindu candidate, Krishna Nandi, from Khulna, in a bid to attract non-Muslim voters.

The International Republican Institute survey suggested the Jamaat-led alliance at number two, with 29 percent, closely behind the BNP.

According to Independent University’s Rejwan, Jamaat has an appeal across Bangladesh’s social classes.

“Its student wing has literally outperformed any other political rivals in the university union elections. We are also seeing the Jamaat-affiliated women’s wing reaching out door-to-door in both rural and urban areas to expand their women’s base of voters. Moreover, since the fall of Hasina, we are seeing pro-Jamaat active and retired elites from security forces, university academics, and civil services constantly pushing the pro-Jamaat narratives within their respective capacities,” he said.

“Jamaat’s upper hand and pragmatic postures are now being extended to its allies, like NCP, which is explicitly reaping all the benefits of its senior partner in the alliance,” he added.

National Citizens Party (NCP)

The NCP, one of Jamaat’s allies, was formed in February 2025 by students who led the mass protests in July 2024 over government job quotas, which ultimately toppled Hasina’s government.

Seeking to stand for the 2026 elections, the leaders told a rally in February 2025 that they had formed the party “to uphold the spirit of the July movement among students”.

Led by Nahid Islam, 27, the stated ideals of the NCP are to ensure “governance without corruption” and to unite the country. The party says it aims to uphold freedom of the press, increase women’s representation in parliament and improve Bangladesh’s relations with neighbouring countries, such as India.

But lacking adequate funds to run by itself in an election, the party has allied with Jamaat. However, the move has been received poorly by some in Bangladesh. It also triggered some resignations by some NCP members over ideological differences.

According to local media reports, those members submitted a memorandum stating that Jamaat’s controversial political history and historical views against Bangladesh’s independence in 1971 were contrary to the NCP’s values.

In an interview with ABC News last month, Nahid Islam defended the decision to unite with Jamaat and said, “When we are forming an electoral alliance, we are not abandoning our own political beliefs. It’s just a strategic alliance.”

“It’s unfortunate to see the leader of the political party that arguably claims to own and lead the 2024 mass uprising and depose Hasina, now become a junior partner to a major political party,” Rejwan said.

“As a result, we see defections of many top leaders of NCP, and astonishingly, by allying, it was only able to bargain for 30 seats for its own candidate. To sum up, Nahid has sold his political autonomy and image of an exclusive figure by de facto becoming subservient to Jamaat,” he added.

Who are the other key players in the election?

Besides the main political parties, Muhammad Yunus, who currently leads the interim government, and General Waker-Uz-Zaman, the army chief, are also influential figures in this election.

Yunus, who was selected to run the government after Hasina’s ousting, is facilitating the election in his capacity as the country’s chief adviser.

But while political parties are campaigning for the election, Yunus is focusing on the referendum on the July Charter, which will take place on the same day.

After Hasina’s ousting, Yunus formed the Constitution Reform Commission (CRC) in 2025, seeking to amend the governance of the country. The commission proposed an anticorruption mechanism, electoral reforms and new rules the police must follow, among other issues. The July Charter is the culmination of the CRC’s work and takes its name from the protests which dismantled Hasina’s government in July 2024. Bangladeshis will vote to approve or reject it in the referendum.

Last month, Yunus expressed confidence in the results of the referendum and told the media he expected people and political parties to agree to the charter. But some critics have said holding the referendum and establishing the charter is not constitutional.

General Zaman is also a key player in the election.

Following the 1975 assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding leader and then-president, the country entered a period marked by coups, countercoups and military rule, which reshaped the state.

Currently, the army is not vying for electoral power, but its focus will be on ensuring public order and security during the election, in light of political violence that has spread in the country since the upheaval of 2024.

The military also plays a role with respect to backing the political party in power or deciding how to govern the country during a political crisis.

In September 2024, after the protests against Hasina, Zaman told the Reuters news agency that he would back Yunus’s interim government “come what may”, while also floating a timeline for elections within 18 months, placing him central to the political debate.

A successful election will require goodwill from both Yunus and the army chief, according to Rejwan.

“Executives under the leadership of Yunus are critical to ensure the nationwide voting, while the Chief of Army Staff Waker’s forces, which would be deployed throughout the country, are indispensable to maintain public order and prevent the proliferation of political instability, violence and chaos,” he said.

Does Hasina have any power at all?

Hasina, who is currently in exile in India, has denounced the upcoming elections since her party, the Awami League, has not been allowed to take part. However, those who voted for her in the past must now choose how to vote this time.

In a message sent to the media last month, Hasina stated that “a government born of exclusion cannot unite a divided nation”.

“Each time political participation is denied to a significant portion of the population, it deepens resentment, delegitimises institutions and creates the conditions for future instability,” the former leader warned in an email to The Associated Press news agency.

Bangladesh’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it was “surprised and shocked” that Hasina had been allowed to make a public address in India. Her speeches and statements are banned from the media in Bangladesh.

“Allowing the event to take place in the Indian capital and letting mass murderer Hasina openly deliver her hate speech … constitute a clear affront to the people and the Government of Bangladesh,” the ministry said in a statement.

Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia by a tribunal in Bangladesh last November, and Dhaka has called on New Delhi to extradite her.

But she remains in India, and Rejwan says she will be a key political instigator of unrest as the elections approach.

“If Hasina were a negligible figure, then the interim government wouldn’t have banned all of her speeches and statements from being aired on television or printed in newspapers … the interim government would also not have reacted so firmly against India for allowing her to speak,” he noted.

“This means Hasina is a factor that the interim government implicitly believes has an influence over the Awami League populace, who are yet undecided on whom to cast their vote for, given that AL is banned from the polls,” he said.

“The reality is that AL has its own clear political ideology and a base of loyal cadres, many of whom have declined to change their allegiance despite living a harsh clandestine life in Bangladesh or abroad,” he added.

In Dhaka’s political chatter, one word often keeps resurfacing when people debate who really holds the reins of the country: “Kochukhet”.

The neighbourhood that houses key military installations has, in recent public discussions, become shorthand for the cantonment’s influence over civilian matters, including politics.

Bangladesh is weeks away from a national election on February 12, the first since the 2024 uprising that ended then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s long rule and ushered in an interim administration led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus.

The army is not vying for electoral power. But it has become central to the voting climate as the most visible guarantor of public order, with the police still weakened in morale and capacity after the upheaval of 2024, and with the country still reckoning with a “security apparatus” that watchdogs and official inquiries say was used to shape political outcomes under Hasina.

For nearly a year and a half now, soldiers have policed the streets of Bangladesh, operating under an order that grants them magisterial powers in support of law and order. On election duty, the deployment will scale up further: Officials have said as many as 100,000 troops are expected nationwide, and proposed changes to election rules would formally list the armed forces among the poll’s “law-enforcing agencies”.

Bangladesh, a nation of more than 170 million wedged between India and Myanmar, has repeatedly seen political transitions hijacked by coups, counter-coups and military rule, a past that still shapes how Bangladeshis read the present.  Analysts say that the army today is not positioned for an overt takeover, but it remains a decisive power centre: an institution embedded across the state, able to narrow civilian choices through its security role, intelligence networks and footprint inside government.

The military’s role now

Thomas Kean, the International Crisis Group’s senior consultant on Bangladesh and Myanmar, said the army has been “backstopping the interim government” not only politically but also “through day-to-day security amid police weakness”.

He said the institution is eager to see a transition to an elected government so the country returns to a firmer constitutional footing and so troops can “return to their barracks”.

“There are different factions and views within the army, but overall I would say that the army wants to see the election take place as smoothly as possible,” Kean told Al Jazeera.

Kean argued that if the army chief, General Waker-uz-Zaman, and the military “had wanted to take power, they could have done so when the political order collapsed on August 5”, the day Hasina fled to India amid a popular student-led revolt. But the military chose not to, he said, in part because it had learned from the fallout of past experiments with its direct political control.

Asif Shahan, a political analyst and professor at Dhaka University, said the military was aware that a takeover would have also jeopardised key interests, including Bangladesh’s United Nations peacekeeping deployments, which carry both financial benefits and reputational weight for the armed forces. Bangladesh has for decades been one of the biggest suppliers to UN peacekeeping missions, and receives between $100m and $500m a year in payouts and equipment reimbursements for these services.

But Shahan argues that the military remains “an important political actor”. Today, he said, its influence is “less about overt intervention than the institutional weight it carries through the security and intelligence apparatus”.

He also pointed to what he called the army’s “corporate” footprint. That footprint spans involvement in major state infrastructure projects, the military’s own business conglomerate, and the presence of serving and retired officers across commercial and state bodies.

Shahan said the last Hasina government “gave them a share of the pie”, leaving “a kind of culture of corruption … ingrained”. He suggested that this could translate into informal pressure on whoever governs next to do the same, and anxieties inside the force over whether “the facilities and privileges” it has accumulated will shrink.

On the election itself, Shahan too said that the possibility of the army trying to gain overt control was “very low” unless there is such a major law and order breakdown that there is public demand for the army to step in as the “only source of stability”,

Others who track the military closely agreed. Rajib Hossain, a former army officer and author of the best-selling book Commando, said he “strongly believes” the army will avoid partisan involvement for its own sake. “The army will play a neutral role during this election,” he said. “What we’ve observed on the ground over the past year and a half, there is no record of the army acting in a partisan way.”

But, he added, pressure on the institution has been intense since 2024. “Internally, there’s an understanding that if the army fails to act neutrally, it could lose even the public credibility it still has,” he said.

Mustafa Kamal Rusho, a retired brigadier general at the Osmani Centre for Peace and Security Studies, also told Al Jazeera that the military does not have “any clear intent” to influence politics, though “it still remains a critical power base”.

That leverage was clearest during the 2024 uprising, Rusho said, when Bangladesh’s political crisis reached a point that many Bangladeshis and international watchdogs viewed the military’s posture as decisive. “If the military did not take the stand that it took, then there would have been more bloodshed,” he said.

With protests escalating, the military refused to fully enforce Hasina’s curfew orders and decided troops would not fire on civilians. It enabled Hasina to flee to India on an air force plane, and the army chief then announced an interim government would be formed.

In an Al Jazeera documentary on the uprising last year, Waker-uz-Zaman, who is related to Hasina and was appointed less than two months before her collapse, also stressed that his forces would not turn their guns on civilians. “We don’t shoot at civilians. It’s not in our culture … So we did not intervene,” he said.

In the same interview, he added: “We believe that the military should not engage in politics … It’s not our cup of tea.”

When the military ruled

That hasn’t always been the military’s position.

After the 1975 assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding leader and then-president, by a group of military officers, the country entered a period marked by coups, counter-coups and military rule upheavals that reshaped the state and produced political forces that still dominate elections.

One of them was the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), founded by army general-turned-ruler Ziaur Rahman, who emerged as the country’s most powerful figure in the late 1970s before moving into civilian politics. Rahman was assassinated in 1981 in a failed coup attempt by another group of military officers. The BNP remains a key contender in the February 12 vote, now led by Rahman’s son, Tarique Rahman, who has returned to front-line politics after a long exile.

In 1982, then army chief Hussain Muhammad Ershad seized power and ruled for much of the 1980s. Writer and political historian Mohiuddin Ahmed has described Ershad’s takeover as coming only months after he publicly argued that “the army should be brought in to help run the country”.

Eventually, a pro-democracy movement led by Zia’s wife, Khaleda Zia, and Hasina, also Mujibur Rahman’s daughter, forced him from office. The BNP won a landmark election, and in 1991, Khaleda became the country’s first female prime minister.

Since then, Rusho said, the military’s influence “became more indirect”, though Bangladesh still saw an abortive May 1996 showdown when the then army chief, Lieutenant General Abu Saleh Mohammad Nasim, defied presidential orders, and troops loyal to him moved towards Dhaka. Nasim was arrested and removed from office.

A decade later, in 2007, the military in effect “fully backed” a caretaker government that was formed to replace Khaleda’s second administration, which had ruled between 2001 and 2006. That caretaker government was installed in January 2007 after a breakdown in the election process and escalating political violence. The International Crisis Group described the caretaker administration as “headed by technocrats but controlled by the military”, while then-army chief Moeen U Ahmed argued the political climate “was deteriorating very rapidly” and that the military’s intervention had “quickly ended” street violence.

It was only after 2009, when Hasina came back to power – her Awami League had first ruled between 1996 and 2001 – that the military became “subordinate to the civilian regime”, Rusho said.

Blurred lines

But even though the military today insists that it does not want power, it has often drifted into the political terrain.

A major moment arrived just weeks after Hasina’s ouster, in September 2024, when General Zaman told the Reuters news agency he would back Yunus’s interim government “come what may”, while also floating a timeline for elections within 18 months. The interview, which critics described as something unprecedented for a serving army chief, placed the military close to the country’s central political debate.

Hossain, the former army officer and author, criticised the public nature of the intervention. “If he [Zaman] had discussed this after sitting with all the stakeholders … the interim [administration], political parties, protest leaders … and then gone to the media, that would be acceptable,” he said. “But here, he declared it unilaterally and blindsided the government from his position of power. He had no authority to do that.”

“You may say this is an extraordinary, transitional time and the military has a role to play,” Hossain added. “But then, why do we have an administration at all?”

Shahan, the Dhaka University professor, said Zaman “came very close” to crossing the line and explained it as a product of military institutional culture after August 5. “Military organisations … like to follow standing operating procedures, order, stability,” he said. But August 5, he added, was “a political rupture” that forced the army and the nation into uncertainty: about the interim government’s longevity, legitimacy and how it would deal with the military.

Those anxieties, Shahan said, likely pushed Zaman to speak. In principle, he said, it is reasonable for the army chief to say elections are needed for stability. But “when he set a specific timeline – within 18 months – that is beyond his role”, Shahan said. “It then appears as if he is dictating.”

Shahan added that the problem becomes sharper when that kind of specificity appears to respond to a party demand; he was referring to a time when only the Bangladesh Nationalist Party was repeatedly pushing for a vote timetable.

Eight months later, in May 2025, Zaman again weighed in, telling a high-level military gathering, according to local media reports, that his position had not changed and that the next national vote should be held by December 2025. After that, Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, a special adviser to Yunus, wrote on Facebook that “the army can’t meddle in politics” and argued that the military chief had failed to maintain “jurisdictional correctness” by prescribing an election deadline.

Around the same period, rumours emerged suggesting that Yunus had considered resigning amid political discord.

The shadow Hasina left

Another reason that analysts say the military’s role is being debated so intensely now is because of Bangladesh’s recent wounds.

During Hasina’s 15-year rule, human rights organisations argued Bangladesh’s security apparatus was often used for political control. Human Rights Watch has described enforced disappearances as a “hallmark” of Hasina’s rule since 2009.

When the United States sanctioned the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in 2021 over allegations of extrajudicial killings, the US Department of the Treasury said, “These incidents target opposition party members, journalists, and human rights activists.” Critics argue that security institutions became central to governance, and questions about how that machinery was used are now part of the post-Hasina political settlement.

Hossain, the former officer, said the Hasina-era legacy still echoes inside the top brass. “If you look at the leadership, the general, five lieutenant generals, and some major generals and brigadier generals, a lot of them were part of Hasina’s apparatus,” he said, “aside from a handful of professional officers”.

A report by Bangladesh’s Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances says disappearances were used as a “tool for political repression” and that the practice “reached alarming levels during key political flashpoints”, including in the run-up to elections in 2014, 2018 and 2024. The commission said it verified 1,569 cases of enforced disappearance.

In cases where political affiliation could be confirmed, the Jamaat-e-Islami and its student wing accounted for about 75 percent of victims, while the BNP and its affiliated groups accounted for about 22 percent. Among those “still missing or dead”, the BNP and its allies accounted for about 68 percent, while the Jamaat and its affiliates accounted for about 22 percent, the report said.

The commission also noted that the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), the military-run intelligence agency, had been “accused of manipulating domestic politics and interfering in the 2014 parliamentary elections”, and argued that perceived alignment with the Awami League compromised its neutrality.

Several senior military officers, including 15 in service, are now facing trial in a civilian tribunal on charges of enforced disappearances, murders and custodial tortures.

The proceedings have become a delicate issue in civil-military relations, as cases against serving officers in civilian courts are rare in Bangladesh’s history.

Former army chief Iqbal Karim Bhuiyan wrote on Facebook that local media had reported disagreements over the “trial process” for officers accused of crimes against humanity and that those disagreements had created what he described as a “chasm” between the interim government and the army’s top leadership.

Hossain, the former officer, however, said he disagreed. “These trials are not defaming the army,” Hossain said. “Rather, they are a kind of redemption for the institution to recover from the stigma created by the crimes of some self-serving officers.”

He argued that accountability could motivate younger officers and reduce the risk of the military being politically exploited again. Rusho, the retired brigadier general, also argued that politicisation under Hasina was driven less by formal doctrine than by executive control over careers.

“Promotions, important postings, placements … they were influenced considerably by the executive branch,” he said. “When you influence postings, some people’s loyalty often gets diverted to political masters, [and] it affects … professionalism and capability.”

Kean of the International Crisis Group said the real test for Bangladesh now would be whether it can stop the security state from being reabsorbed into partisan politics.

“The military is going to remain a powerful institution in Bangladesh, with a level of influence in domestic politics,” he said. “One hopes that the lesson of the past 18 months is that the military is better to support civilian administrations rather than be in power directly – that it can be a stabilising force, and one that is ultimately committed to democracy and civilian leadership.”

But, he added, the onus to do that isn’t only on the generals. Civilian politicians, too, needed to resist the temptation to misuse the military. That alone, he suggested, would help Bangladesh keep the army in the barracks and politicians accountable to the people, not to men in khakis.