For a long time, BNP has behaved as if an absolute majority would come to it almost automatically. This comfort has weakened the party’s political thinking. In political science, this is often called an “overconfidence trap”: A party assumes its popular support is so deep that internal weaknesses will not seriously hurt it.
In reality, many grassroots leaders face corruption allegations, and BNP removed more than 7,000 of them from their posts. One can present this as “accountability,” but it also exposed the party’s internal unrest and its fragile organizational base.
At the same time, the long-running “Minus BNP” project allowed its opponents to run a steady campaign. They have been quite successful in fixing an image of the BNP as corrupt, dishonest, and unfit to govern.
After the Ducsu election, BNP may finally have realized that Jamaat is not as weak as it once assumed. Jamaat is disciplined, strategic, and patient. By contrast, the Chhatra Dal-backed panel, despite losing, did surprisingly well with only four weeks of preparation. Shibir, by comparison, relied on its stable organizational machine and Jamaat’s backing, having prepared for Ducsu since December 2024.
Anyone familiar with Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy” knows that survival depends on leadership and structural discipline. Jamaat has kept that discipline; Chhatra Dal has struggled with disorder and last-minute arrangements. The modest success of Chhatra Dal was driven mainly by the personal effort and sacrifice of activists, not by party strength. But elections cannot be won only by individual effort; they demand an organization that can work in a steady, coordinated way over time.
This defeat has made one thing clear: In election-centred politics, BNP’s main rival is Jamaat, not just the Awami League. Yet the BNP has not built the organizational or intellectual strength needed to face that rival.
The reason is straightforward. BNP is first and foremost a mass-based party, not an organization-centred party. Jamaat has been busy strengthening its own networks while quietly working to chip away at BNP’s mass support. Meanwhile, the anti-BNP camp has been relatively successful in branding BNP as corrupt, as looters, or as a “tempo-stand party” with no serious future.
If we look at BNP’s present condition, the structure appears very fragile. During the Awami League years, many people explained this fragility as the result of state repression and felt sympathy. After August 2024, that sympathy has evaporated.
Now people more often read BNP’s weakness as organizational failure, not just victimhood. This has created a serious problem: If a party is widely seen as weak and disorganized for too long, people begin to doubt whether it can run the country at all.
The Ducsu election has shown that politics is not only about anger, emotion or slogans; it also requires long-term planning and institution-building. As Samuel Huntington argued, political organizations survive and matter only when their politics is institutionalized. BNP has not been able to do that, and their party members will soon see the price of that failure.
If the BNP wants to overcome this weakness, its main leader has to return to the ground and stand physically among party workers. From exile, Tarique Rahman did show for many years that he could keep the party together. He also benefited from a sense of public sympathy in that period. That sympathy is no longer what it was.
The silence of senior BNP leaders after Ducsu is telling. Does this silence carry a message? Is there hidden anger within the party that is slowly weakening what remains of its structure? Or are small groups inside BNP now trying to control politics in Tarique’s absence?
These are not questions that can be answered through Facebook posts or video messages from abroad. What is needed now is real presence: Going to the field, walking the alleys of cities, visiting campuses, meeting farmers in their fields, praying in mosques, greeting people at puja mandaps.
Political scientists sometimes call this the effect of “proximity”: Being physically close to people strengthens trust. These are not mere rituals; they are tools for rebuilding political authority.
Since BNP is a leader-centred party, any delay in Tarique Rahman’s return exposes the party’s weakness even more. In Max Weber’s terms, Tarique is the party’s main source of personal authority. If he stays away from the field for too long, new gatekeepers will grow inside the party who will divide it, bargain in his name and, in time, even challenge his place.
BNP would be making a serious mistake if it assumes that civil society, various power centres, or ordinary citizens will support it forever simply because they fear or dislike Jamaat. BNP is not the only possible alternative in Bangladesh’s politics, and it should not behave as if it is.
Seen from this angle, Tarique Rahman’s return to Bangladesh -- coming back and bowing his head on the country’s soil -- is not just a matter of emotion; it is now the most urgent political task before the BNP.
The real question is whether BNP will have the courage and clarity to choose this path, or whether it will continue to drift until others fill the space it once thought it owned by default.
Asif Bin Ali is a Doctoral Fellow at Georgia State University. Email: [email protected].
