Can a dynastic heir lead a post-dynasty Bangladesh?

On Christmas Day this year, Tarique Rahman – the heir evident of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the antheral galore judge could beryllium the country’s adjacent premier curate – returned location and stepped straight into a powerfulness vacuum that has been steadily widening since the illness of the Awami League authorities successful August 2024.

After 17 years successful exile, Rahman’s enactment of touching the ungraded was cautiously staged for the cameras, but its consequences are structural alternatively than symbolic. Bangladesh contiguous is simply a authorities without a dependable pulse, and his instrumentality has brought the country’s little post-revolutionary interlude to an end.

Five days later, connected December 30, the governmental infinitesimal hardened into humanities finality. Khaleda Zia – the erstwhile premier curate and woman of BNP laminitis and erstwhile Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman – died aft a prolonged illness, severing the past surviving nexus to the party’s archetypal enactment generation.

Rahman is nary longer Khaleda Zia’s successor. He is present the person of the BNP arsenic it heads towards elections connected February 12.

The federation Rahman near successful 2008 was fractured; the 1 helium inhabits present is structurally compromised. The hurried formation of Sheikh Hasina to India aft the uprising against her ended a decennary and a fractional of autocratic regularisation but near down a hollowed-out bureaucracy and a societal declaration successful shreds.

While Muhammad Yunus’s interim medication attempts to negociate the transition, thoroughfare powerfulness has already begun to bypass ceremonial authority. In this volatility, Rahman’s beingness acts arsenic a high-voltage conductor for the BNP, providing a focal constituent for an absorption that was, until recently, systematically suppressed.

For millions who viewed the past decennary of elections nether Hasina’s authoritarian grip arsenic foregone conclusions, Rahman represents the instrumentality of choice.

Yet Rahman is nary insurgent outsider; helium is the eventual merchandise of the strategy helium seeks to lead. As the lad of 2 erstwhile leaders of the country, helium carries the value of a dynastic bequest intimately associated with the patronage networks that person agelong hobbled Bangladeshi governance. His earlier proximity to powerfulness was marked by allegations of informal authorization and corruption – charges that proceed to service arsenic governmental ammunition for his detractors. To supporters, helium is simply a unfortunate of judicial overreach; to critics, helium is grounds of wherefore Bangladesh’s antiauthoritarian experiments truthful often illness nether the value of elite impunity.

This duality defines the hostility of his return. Rahman is present attempting a pivot, trading the rhetoric of thoroughfare agitation for the measured cadence of a statesman. His caller speeches – emphasizing number protection, nationalist unity, and the regularisation of instrumentality – suggest a person acutely alert that the younker who helped dislodge Hasina volition not judge a elemental alteration successful the individuality of the ruling elite.

The BNP helium present leads faces a Bangladesh that is much globally integrated and little diligent with opaque politics. If Rahman takes power, unit to betterment the judiciary and the Election Commission volition beryllium immediate. Without organization credibility, immoderate mandate helium secures volition person a dangerously abbreviated support life.

Economically, Rahman is apt to prosecute pragmatic continuity. Bangladesh’s dependence connected garment exports and overseas concern leaves small country for ideological experimentation. The existent trial volition beryllium interior discipline. The temptation to settee aged scores and reward loyalists done the aforesaid rent-seeking channels utilized by erstwhile regimes volition beryllium immense. History suggests this is wherever Bangladeshi leaders neglect – and the country’s existent economical fragility leaves nary borderline for specified indulgence.

The astir delicate arena, however, volition beryllium overseas argumentation – specifically, relations with India. For years, New Delhi recovered a predictable, if transactional, spouse successful Sheikh Hasina. The BNP, by contrast, has agelong been viewed by Indian information circles with suspicion and strategical unease.

Rahman present appears to beryllium signalling a reset, moving distant from nationalist antagonism towards what helium describes arsenic “balanced sovereignty”. He understands that portion Bangladesh indispensable recalibrate its narration with India to fulfill home sentiment, it cannot spend hostility with its astir consequential neighbour. For India, the situation is accepting that a stable, pluralistic Bangladesh – adjacent nether a acquainted rival – is preferable to a perpetually unstable one.

Ultimately, Rahman’s instrumentality is simply a accent trial not conscionable for Bangladesh, but for the thought of antiauthoritarian prime successful South Asia itself. This is not a elemental dynastic succession; it is simply a reckoning. After years of enforced stableness and managed outcomes, the reintroduction of governmental uncertainty is, paradoxically, a motion of antiauthoritarian life.

Whether Tarique Rahman uses this opening to rebuild institutions helium erstwhile bypassed – oregon reverts to the habits of the past – volition find much than his idiosyncratic legacy. It volition determine whether Bangladesh tin yet interruption its rhythm of exile and revenge, oregon whether it is simply preparing for the adjacent collapse.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.