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Bangladesh’s political future is once again suspended in uncertainty. Since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s regime following a mass uprising and her hurried flight to India, the country has drifted without a clear centre of gravity.

Amid the confusion, one conclusion has gained near-universal acceptance: that only a credible election can restore legitimacy. By most accounts, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is now best positioned to form the next government. And on Thursday (December 25), its de facto leader, Tarique Rahman, has returned home after years in exile, ushering in what is set to be a decisive and deeply contested chapter in the nation’s politics.

Few political figures in Bangladesh have been judged as relentlessly and prematurely as Rahman. Long before he ever held state power, verdicts were passed on his competence, his character and his capacity to lead. This reflex to declare him a failure before he has even been tested has followed him across regimes and eras.

During the previous government’s tenure, a steady stream of narratives sought to reduce him to a caricature: inept, unfit, unworthy and even a brat. After the massive uprising and the subsequent political rupture of August 5, 2024, the same judgments persist as though the result of his leadership is already known, despite the fact that he has not yet governed.

This is not to deny the shortcomings within his party. The BNP has struggled to contain indiscipline and misconduct among its ranks. Efforts were made to act against those implicated in irregularities and abuses, but not all allegations were resolved, nor could they be.

Yet critics’ preferred tactic has been less about accountability and more about substitution. Instead of engaging Rahman directly, they routinely present a criminal suspect – often a former leader or a marginal figure from a distant locality – as the true face of the BNP. The implication is clear: Rahman is irrelevant; the party is defined by its worst, not its leader.

This strategy has been refined over years. A section of left-leaning intellectuals helped entrench the image of Rahman as “uncultured” or politically illegitimate, an outsider to serious governance. That framing migrated seamlessly into mainstream media and has since been amplified by right-wing rivals and online provocateurs.

Social media, in particular, has become a relentless echo chamber, recycling old allegations and new distortions with little regard for proportion or fairness.

What emerges is not a debate over policy or vision, but a sustained exercise in narrative politics – one that substitutes character assassination for democratic scrutiny.

Across two distinct political periods, Rahman has faced an information environment overwhelmingly hostile to him. The bias has been so pervasive that it has often obscured a basic democratic principle: leaders should be judged by what they do in power, not by what others predict they will do.

It is under these conditions that Rahman has returned to Bangladesh. His homecoming is already reshaping political equations, both within the BNP and beyond it. Until now, he has led from afar, constrained by exile and circumstance. Now he will enter the arena in person – facing towering expectations and a political system still reeling from upheaval.

The stakes could not be higher. The gap between what Bangladesh’s........

© The Wire