After the formation of the caretaker government on 8 August 2024, perhaps the most frequently asked question by citizens has been: “Will there be an election?” As a journalist, I find myself hearing this question more often than others at any event.

Every time I hear it, I am transported 18 years back to 2007. At that time, I was working in the Election Commission beat for the daily Janakantha newspaper. Whether on assignment, within my family, or at the local neighbourhood shop—wherever I went, people asked the same question: “Will there be an election?”

The nearly two years leading up to the 2008 election were marked by extensive preparations—but also by deep uncertainty.

This uncertainty was not entirely unfounded. It is not a very old event, and many may still remember it, but a brief context is necessary. After the popular uprising of the 1990s, Bangladesh witnessed its first election under a “non-partisan government.” In the 1991 election, BNP came to power.

However, widespread allegations of rigging in the Magura by-election raised questions about whether free and fair elections could occur under a partisan government.