BNP and Jamaat governed together from 2001 to 2006, and Jamaat has said it is open to reviving the alliance through a unity government, arguing it could help stabilise the country after months of unrest in 2024 that severely disrupted Bangladesh’s vital garment industry.
Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Tarique Rahman on Friday rejected a call from his chief rival to form a unity government after next week’s election, saying his party was confident it could govern on its own.
Rahman, 60, returned to Bangladesh in December after spending nearly 20 years in exile in London. His return followed a youth-led uprising that overthrew long-serving prime minister Sheikh Hasina, a long-time political adversary of Rahman’s mother, former prime minister Khaleda Zia, Bangladesh’s first woman to hold the post.
The BNP’s principal challenger in the February 12 vote is Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, which was previously banned but has staged a political comeback.
BNP and Jamaat governed together from 2001 to 2006, and Jamaat has said it is open to reviving the alliance through a unity government, arguing it could help stabilise the country after months of unrest in 2024 that severely disrupted Bangladesh’s vital garment industry.
Bangladesh has been under an interim administration since August 2024, when Hasina fled to long-time ally India, where she remains.
Speaking in an interview at BNP headquarters, seated beneath portraits of his parents, including his father, a former president, Rahman questioned the logic of such an arrangement. “How can I form a government with my political opponents, and then who would be in the opposition?” he said.
“I don’t know what will be their seat number, but if they are in the opposition, I hope to have them as a good opposition.”
His aides said the BNP was confident of winning more than two thirds of the 300 parliamentary seats up for grabs. The party is contesting 292 of them, with allies vying for the rest.
Rahman declined to give a number but said ”we are confident that we’ll have enough to form a government”.
All opinion polls have forecast a BNP victory but also a stiff challenge from the Jamaat alliance, which includes a Gen Z party that emerged from the youth-led anti-Hasina protests.
Good relations globally
New Delhi’s decision to shelter Hasina, whom a Dhaka court last year sentenced to death for her role in the crackdown, has badly strained Bangladesh-India relations while giving China an opening to expand its investments and political outreach.
Asked whether he would pivot away from India toward China should he win, Rahman said Bangladesh needed partners capable of boosting economic growth for its nearly 175 million people.
“If we are in the government, we need to provide jobs for young people. We need to bring businesses into the country so that jobs can be created and people can have a better life,” he said.
“So whoever, while protecting the interests and sovereignty of Bangladesh, offers what is suitable for my people and my country, we will have friendship with them, not with any particular country.”
Asked whether Hasina’s children were free to return from abroad and engage in politics, he said: “If someone is accepted by the people, if people welcome them, then anyone has the right to do politics.”
Hasina’s Awami League is banned from contesting the election. Many senior leaders and members of her family were already abroad before her fall or fled around that time.
ROHINGYA WELCOME TO STAY UNTIL SAFE TO RETURN
Bangladesh, one of the world’s most densely populated countries with high rates of extreme poverty, hosts nearly 1.2 million Rohingya Muslim refugees, many of whom fled multiple crackdowns in neighbouring Buddhist-majority Myanmar, where they are treated as outsiders.
The interim government said last year it had no capacity to allocate additional resources for the refugees “given our numerous challenges” and called on the international community to help repatriate them.
Rahman said he too wanted them to return home but only when conditions were safe.
“We will try to work on the issue so that these people can go back to their own land,” he said. “The situation has to be safe for them to go back there. As long as it is not safe, they are very welcome to stay here.”
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