Several advisers, including Muhammad Yunus, the head of Bangladesh's interim administration, are saying that the general election will be held in the country before Ramzan in February. That means there remain three months and a few days until the polls. Yet what is more significant is that the election the interim arrangement seeks to hold appears to be a one-sided affair—much like the one Sheikh Hasina staged in 2024.

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The last truly fair election in Bangladesh was in 2008.

If we examine the vote share of the 2008 election by party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) got 32.5% of the national vote, Jamaat-e-Islami 4.28%, and others ideologically aligned with the BNP–Jamaat bloc, roughly 3%. In other words, the 2024 election was conducted excluding about 39.78% (roughly 40%) of the country's total voters.

The current interim authority has already, through an executive order, suspended the organisational activities of the Awami League. The Election Commission has likewise stated that the Awami League will not be allowed to contest. Whether the country’s third-largest party, the Jatiya Party, will be permitted to participate also remains unclear.

In the 2008 election, the Awami League, which won the poll, had a vote share of 48%.

Ambiguity Over Participation In Bangladesh Election

When the interim administration's head or the commissions it has formed hold dialogues with political parties, the Jatiya Party is never invited.

If that party is also excluded from the field, then—according to the 2008 vote statistics—48.04% of votes belonging to the Awami League, 7.04% of the Jatiya Party, and another 1.9% combined of its alliance partners, Workers Party and JASAD, would be left out. Which totals to 56.17% of the electorate of Bangladesh.

The interim head, Muhammad Yunus, has remarked that "people say the Awami League still has 20 percent support", but he does not believe it himself. One must, of course, respect anyone's personal belief—but personal conviction and political reality rarely travel together.

Historical Context of the Awami League

Many now think that the Awami League is in a worse condition than even on August 15, 1975.

After that fateful year, when the Awami League went to the parliamentary polls in