Fewer choices, fear stalks

FPJ Special BANGLADESH MANDATE

- Sufia Chowdhury

In August of 2024, when the streets of Dhaka filled with students and the air carried the familiar smell of tear gas and burned rubber, Kamaal Mazumdar believed he was witnessing the birth of a different country.

The protests, improvised, and brimming with youthful certainty, ended, improbably, with the exile of Sheikh Hasina, who fled to India after more than a decade in power.

It felt, at the time, like a correction of history: a reset button pressed by a generation tired of managed democracy.

But now after 18 months, an unemployed Mazumdar, back in his hometown of Rajshahi, speaks of that moment with a kind of embarrassed nostalgia.

With elections scheduled for February 12, he feels less like a citizen of a reborn republic, and more a spectator to a slow-motion unravelling of Bangladesh.

“The streets were safer, more people had jobs and we could speak out without being labelled or beaten up, before this new regime took over,” he said with a sigh.

Even as he spoke, in nearby Natore, activists of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) were fighting supporters of independent candidates. Government employees were protesting outside the official residence of Mohammad Yunus, the head of the interim government, demanding higher wages. In Chittagong, port workers had shut down operations over fears that the country’s most strategic harbour might be leased to a global MNC.