As the Boeing Dreamliner 787-9 touched down in Dhaka late Thursday morning, the airstrip ahead was metaphorically forked for Tarique Rahman, interim chairman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

He stepped on his motherland after 17 years in exile in London, hounded out in 2008 by serious corruption charges and even the blot of a failed assassination attempt on Awami League (AL) chief Sheikh Hasina.

The ‘Dark Prince’ — an epithet coined in December 2005 by then US Charge d’Affaires Judith A Chammas — faces an election in February which he is likely to win handsomely.

There are just two minor problems.

One, that the election promised by the chief advisor to the caretaker government, Muhammad Yunus, may be derailed by Jamaat-e-Islami, which knows it may not come to power. By creating circumstances to stall the polls, it would get more time to arm-twist Yunus and capture more institutions.

The second challenge may come from Yunus himself, a wily and ambitious man capable of desperate manipulations to cling on to power. But if elections happen........

© News18