Exiled envoy says 2026 election among ‘ugliest in Bangladesh’s history’

Dhaka: Mohammad Harun Al Rashid, a seasoned Bangladeshi diplomat (now exiled), in an exclusive interview with a leading think tank, described Bangladesh’s national election slated for Thursday as one of the “ugliest” in the country’s history.

He warned that the interim government’s Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus, who has long survived by repackaging the grotesque as virtue, cannot evade accountability.

In an interview with Sri Lanka-based think tank Trinco Centre for Strategic Studies (TSST), Rashid said, “Like everything Yunus calls ‘beautiful’, this election is among the ugliest in Bangladesh’s history, and that is not hyperbole. Yunus has long survived by repackaging the grotesque as virtue. This time, he will not get away with it.”

He asserted that what is unfolding is not a genuine election but a contest between two factions of the 2024 “jihadist coalition” that seized power by overthrowing former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

He argued that on one side stands the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies, while on the other is the radical Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami and its partners.

Ideologically, Rashid, speaking to TSST, said, the BNP resembles Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood — if not structurally — while Jamaat parallels Hamas in Palestine, stressing that neither represents democratic values and that both reflect Islamist extremism.

“No genuinely democratic party has been permitted to contest. Yunus is openly manoeuvring to control the outcome so that he remains central to the next government. His preferred partners are Jamaat and its affiliates, including the NCP, whose cadres acted as suicide operatives during the 2024 jihadist violence disguised as the so-called quota movement,” the Bangladeshi diplomat stated.

“Add to this the involvement of foreign actors, particularly in the West, searching for the most obedient proxies. Call it an election if you wish. It is nothing of the sort,” he emphasised.

Responding to a question on how to interpret Bangladesh’s sudden transformation, from a secular republic to a state increasingly viewed through the prism of terror, Rashid told TSST, the shift represents a setback not only for Bangladesh but for humanity as a whole in the 21st century.

“The devastation caused by eighteen months of Yunus’s usurped rule has undone decades of progress. It has destroyed an economy painstakingly rebuilt under Sheikh Hasina and has systematically dismantled Bangladesh’s secular identity, historical memory, and the moral legacy of its Liberation War. This is not merely political regression; it is civilisational vandalism,” he added.

When asked about his claims that Bangladesh has “descended into terror” under Yunus, despite the latter’s long-standing image in the West as a liberal icon, Rashid said those who had closely observed Yunus viewed him as “a swindler, an international charlatan skilled at charming Western patrons by blinding them with rhetoric and reputation.”

IANS