Awami League has lost moral right to contest next polls in Bangladesh, says BNP youth wing leader

Nasir Uddin Nasir, general secretary of Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Chatradal, says fall of Hasina regime was about bringing back democracy, attacks on which began under her father's reign.

Nasir Uddin Nasir, leader of Bangladesh Nationalist Party's youth wing

Dhaka: After caretaker to the interim government in Bangladesh Muhammad Yunus announced that the next national election in the country can take place between the end of 2025 and first half of 2026, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) youth leader Nasir Uddin Nasir said Awami League has lost the moral right to participate in the polls.

Talking to ThePrint over phone from Dhaka, Nasir, 35, who is the general secretary of the Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Chatradal, BNP’s youth wing, said it was under the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government that the country moved away from electoral democracy to autocracy.

“It will depend on the public mood if Awami League does or does not participate in the next election in Bangladesh, but the July revolution that saw the fall of the Hasina regime was about bringing democracy back to Bangladesh,” Nasir told ThePrint.

He added that the attacks on electoral democracy didn’t begin with Sheikh Hasina but under her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s reign.

“Public memory is short. But after the fourth amendment to the constitution on 25 January, 1975, Mujib formed the Bangladesh Worker-Peasant’s People’s League, or BaKSAL. A presidential order outlawed all political parties other than Awami League, the Communist Party of Bangladesh, the National Awami Party (Muzaffar) and Bangladesh Jatiya League that were part of BakSAL,” Nasir said. That, according to Nasir, was the beginning of the erosion of multi-party democracy in Bangladesh, which was expedited under Sheikh Hasina’s 15 uninterrupted years in power.

The BNP had not participated in the 7 January national election this year that brought Hasina back to power in Bangladesh for a successive fourth term in office, and Bangladesh’s largest Islamic party, the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh was barred by the courts from participating in the polls. “The key question in this election is not who will win—the result is predetermined—but rather a test of its credibility,” Al Jazeera’s Jonah Hull had said, reporting from Dhaka.

And it is India’s continued support to Hasina, despite her government’s alleged protracted efforts to dilute electoral democracy in Bangladesh, which, Nasir said, has led to such a strong anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh. “We earned our independence with blood. Are we to sell that independence? We snatched freedom from Pindi; will we now surrender it to Delhi? We do not possess such blood,” BNP joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi had said earlier this month, days after he publicly burnt his wife’s Indian saree and an Indian bedsheet to mark his protest against the attack on Bangladesh consulate in Agartala.

“It was not just 2024, but the two national elections before that—in 2014 and 2018, which brought Hasina to power—were a mockery of democracy. And we believe that India supported Hasina throughout this period. That has led to bad blood between India and Bangladesh,” Nasir said.

‘India’s dismissal of a genuine peoples’ revolution hurtful’

According to Nasir, in the past 15 years, the youth in Bangladesh saw the ebbing away of democracy with Hasina at the helm. And that he said led to the students’ protests against the quota system in Bangladesh in July which became a mass unrest against the Hasina regime with participation from all sections of Bangladesh society. Nasir said there has been a lot of talk from India discrediting the July revolution which has not gone down well with the people of Bangladesh.

“It was a revolution by the students for the people of Bangladesh. After the fall of Hasina, we got to hear from India that there was foreign hand behind the protests. The conspiracy theories and the dismissive attitude of a section of Indian media about a genuine peoples’ revolution has hurt Bangladesh,” he said.

The killings of Bangladeshi at the India-Bangladesh border, the dismissive attitude towards the students’ revolution and the over-reliance on Hasina are the main factors behind the anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh civil society, said Nasir.

“The BNP wants to work with India. We want India to engage with Bangladesh and establish people-to-people contacts. This is a new Bangladesh that wants to do away with the mistakes of the past,” Nasir said.

The BNP, he said, is elated that the party’s acting chairman Tarique Rahman will return to Bangladesh soon. On 1 December, the Bangladesh High Court acquitted Rahman along with others accused in the 21 August, 2004, grenade attacks on the Awami League’s top leadership that killed 24 and injured hundreds of Awami League leaders and workers. Rahman has been in self-imposed exile in London since September 2008. “The entire country is waiting for his return,” Nasir said.

(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)