Building a winning electoral narrative involves selectively emphasizing past events to create a compelling and politically useful interpretation of reality. Such narratives simplify reality so that voters can choose a partisan perspective as the dominant truth. Wily politicians insist on a cherry-picked “wrong” and simultaneously insist on the same with their own partisan existence to suggest it as the only remedial option. Such past events may not necessarily be false, lies or misinformation, but it could just be about selective emphasis ~ but that too could still be equally malicious, spiteful, and tantamount to Machiavellian politics.

The triumphant return of the once-slammed “Dark Prince” of Bangladeshi politics, Tarique Rahman, the son of former Prime Minister Khaleeda Zia (Bangladesh National Party), led to a flurry of carefully-curated statements that suggested just that sort of cherry-picking to trigger reactions. Ending his self-imposed exile which he recollected dramatically, “after a long 6314 days”, he continued with the theatrical invocation of Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” allusion with his own twist of “I have a plan for the people of my country, for my country,” in front of a mesmerised 50 lakh cadres who had gathered to see their political messiah! Ut But Tarique Rahman would know best that the rival in the current situation is no longer his traditional foe, i.e., ousted Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League (banned by decree by the caretaker Yunus Muhammad dispensation), but the more extremist Jamaat-e-Islami-like forces that have the electoral winds in their sails.

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With the Awami League banned from participating in the General Elections slated for February, it should have been a cakewalk for Tarique Rahman’s BNP ~ but........

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