Abdul Monaiem Kudrot Ullah writes on how Bangladesh perfected the art of political handicap at 19th hole
IN THE soft twilight of a battered republic, I stand — a retired navy man — sifting through the debris of what once passed for democracy. I am no politician. Duty and discipline kept me apart from the fevered pitch of slogans and street battles. Yet, I have always watched. As a citizen, as a soldier of the soil, as a son of this broken dream.
I have seen, across privileged corridors, alumni networks, and WhatsApp murmurings, how the elite — snug in concrete nests built with public wealth — spit out sermons on integrity while longing for a nation without politics, without politicians, without the messy, inconvenient business of people choosing their own fate. These are the same who inherit state-funded plots, who sip tea in gated sanctuaries, and who deride elections as vulgar rituals even as they fortify themselves against the will of the people.
They chant their mantras that politicians are unworthy, that votes are bought, and that the masses are beyond redemption. Our chief advisers — men meant to steady the ship — have echoed this despair. But I remember another time. A braver, simpler time. When Shah Azizur Rahman and Barrister Abdul Haque debated fiercely beneath ancient neem trees — not under surveillance, but in the open air, where ideas clashed, not weapons. A time protected, however imperfectly, by a soldier named Ziaur Rahman, who understood that politics is the art of respecting people.
Today, that art is lost. Bangladesh has become a theatre of illusion — a golf course of tyranny. Here, politics is no longer a contest of conviction, but a rigged game. The powerful are forced to feign weakness; the weak are gifted unearned strokes. The game is choreographed by bureaucrats, media moguls, civil society elites — those who control the clubhouse of influence.
The manipulation is as old as the republic. In Pakistan, generals and bureaucrats clipped the wings of politicians; in Bangladesh, our elites refined this into something more insidious. They tilt the greens, shift the tees, and move the holes — ensuring no genuine competition unfolds. And all the while, they hang banners above the clubhouse proclaiming ‘democracy,’ ‘rule of law,’ and ‘reform.’ Inside, the game is fixed. Every ball aimed at change is nudged out of bounds by invisible hands.
I never wore a party badge. But like a silent caddie at the edge of the green, I have watched — as the strong are forced to slice their shots, the weak are handed free drops, and the scoreboard is doctored before the first hole is played. We are told to clap for this spectacle, to believe in its fairness, as the republic sinks deeper into the sand traps of betrayal.
Our political parties too have played their parts in this tragedy. The Muslim League, which shattered zamindari chains, buried itself in the ashes of 1954. The Awami League, which carved a nation from genocide, crushed its own children beneath greed. JASOD, born of revolution’s hope, became power’s servant. Each empire of hope rotted into betrayal. And always, it was the people who paid — with their dignity, their votes, their blood.
Yet, in this theatre of ghosts, came a crack in the edifice: a quiet meeting in a London hotel room. Tarique Rahman — long vilified, long exiled — sat face to face with Dr Muhammad Yunus — the darling of Davos, the architect of polite internationalism. No cameras, no press releases. Just two men, burdened by history, speaking with weary honesty. Not of power, but of possibility. Not of elections, but of escape — from the cycle of blood and betrayal.
Tarique, deliberate and articulate, spoke of institutions, accountability, reforms that could arrest our slide into authoritarianism. Yunus, for once, listened not as a laureate, but as a man seeking a path out of the impasse. For a fleeting moment, they outlined a republic reborn.
But let us not be naïve. Dhaka has seen such outlines before. Every hope here is born with a noose around its neck. Every revolution sows its own undoing. The media — especially Prothom Alo and The Daily Star — have long crafted narratives that serve power, reducing complex figures like Tarique to caricatures, feeding fear while the republic crumbles.
That meeting, of course, may be buried beneath layers of fresh betrayal and old resentments. The media may twist it; the elite may undermine it; the generals may reject it. But for one brief instant, Bangladesh saw itself not as ruin, but as possibility.
The question is: do we, at last, have the courage to grasp that possibility — or will we, once again, watch it fade into the graveyard of squandered chances?
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The masquerade of power: Bangladesh’s endless handicap
THE masquerade endures. Once-sacred words —Ìýreform,Ìýrule of law,ÌýdemocracyÌý— now echo like hollow trophies in a clubhouse long deserted by those who once championed them. These ideals, once the rallying cries of a people yearning for dignity, have been reduced to instruments of delay — wielded by an elite desperate to postpone the reckoning they know is coming. Beneath the polished rhetoric lies a tired, cynical strategy: weaken the strong, prop up the weak, and call it balance.
This strategy is not new. It began in the earliest days of Pakistan, when generals and bureaucrats, unsure of their own legitimacy, resolved to hobble politicians — the stronger hand — before they could drive the ball too far, too fast. When Bangladesh emerged from that shadow, it did not escape the game. It merely changed players. Here, it was not the military but bureaucrats, intellectuals, and a curated civil society who took up the mission of keeping politics tame, predictable and weak. The people were handed the illusion of choice — ballots, booths, slogans — while the real decisions were made behind closed doors, adjusting the grip, redrawing the course.
But now, the script is fraying.
Ironically, it is a military general — long seen as the referee of rigged matches — who appears most eager to let the game proceed. Whatever his motives, he seems determined to hold an election. The irony is sharp: the institution once accused of tilting the field now finds itself defending the rulebook. The question is whether the other players will allow the match to unfold — or whether, as always, they will rewrite the rules at the last minute.
Because the elite’s deepest fear was never BNP, nor Tarique Rahman, nor even the spectre of Jamaat lurking at the edge of the fairway. Their true terror has always been the return of real politics — the people picking up the club for themselves, setting their own course. This is not a feud between parties. It is the panic of an establishment so accustomed to scripting outcomes that it cannot imagine a game it does not control.
The pattern is familiar. In 1996, BNP’s return to the ballot box after a year of paralysis sent shockwaves through the establishment. In 2008, the military-backed caretaker regime responded with surgical precision: activists disappeared, polling agents erased, leaders demonized in a media landscape more interested in scandal than substance. Every constitutional tweak, every judicial manoeuvre, every whisper campaign since has served one goal:Ìýanything but BNP. But beneath that slogan lies the deeper creed:Ìýanything but true democracy.
Institutions meant to mediate between people and power have been hollowed out. The courts no longer shield dissent — they punish it. The police no longer protect the public — they guard the gates of privilege. The Election Commission, once a guarantor of fair play, now merely sets the stage for a preordained outcome. Parliament, once the voice of the nation, now debates numbers while ignoring the injustices committed in its name.
And yet, BNP endures — fractured, but alive. A strange coalition of nationalists, secularists, conservatives and Islamists. Jamaat, bruised and marginalised, clings to the margins. A new party rises, promising aÌýnatun bandobasto, but offering little clarity on the course it intends to chart. The elite consensus remains unchanged: BNP must be kept out — not because of its past sins, but because, given a fair course, it might just win. And that victory could unleash the one force no elite can manage: the people’s will.
But in its desperation, BNP too has stumbled. Instead of transcending the system, it has mirrored it. Factionalism, vanity and internal strife have weakened the very hand that once promised change. The party that once stood as a beacon for a different kind of politics now finds itself trapped in the same cycle — feuding over legacy while the opportunity for renewal slips away.
And so, we arrive at yet another round in this bitter tournament. The regime sharpens its tactics. The opposition quarrels with itself. The people watch — weary, sceptical, but not yet broken — wondering if this time, finally, they will be allowed to play the game on their own terms.
The youth are told to wait, to respect the process. But they see the process for what it is: a rigged match, a spectacle designed to keep them in the gallery, clapping politely while others decide their fate.
Dhaka — this city of betrayals and rebirths — has seen it all before. Movements that rose with hope only to rot from within. The Muslim League. The Awami League. JASOD. Each played the game. Each failed the people in the end.
And now? Now we wait. To see if the mask will finally fall. To see if the storm the elites thought they could outrun will arrive. To see if the people will, at last, reclaim the club that was always theirs.
And so, the game continues — not with thunder, but with the soft rustle of paper ballots folded by hands that no longer believe. The stronger hand is bound, the weaker hand is lifted, and the people — the real players — are told to wait, to clap, to cheer for a match they were never invited to play.
This is not just Bangladesh’s tragedy. It is a global choreography of containment, performed with local accents but always the same rhythm: suppress the surge, sedate the spirit, and sell stability as salvation. In Thailand, in Pakistan, in Turkey — the script repeats. And here, our rulers, ever the diligent students of suppression, have refined it into an art form.
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The tragedy of a party that forgot its own sacrifice
THE discourse has descended into farce. We are told — by the usual chorus of cynics and courtiers — that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party lacks ‘educated people.’ As if education were some dinner jacket worn for polite company, rather than the fire that once lit the streets of defiance. As if conviction mattered less than connections. As if the memory of struggle were a luxury this battered republic could afford to forget.
But the tragedy is not what is said about BNP by its enemies. The tragedy is the decay from within. The greed. The vanity. The endless, petty feuds that have turned a movement of hope into a monument of ash. A party that once dared to challenge autocracy now staggers under the weight of its own contradictions.
And here, of course, is the bitter irony. We are so quick to erase the past — to sneer at it, to mock it. Yet it was this same BNP that once stood at the nation’s turning points. It brought back multiparty democracy from the ashes of one-party rule in 1975. It restored press freedom when the silence had become deafening. It sacrificed its preferred presidential system in 1991, bowing to the greater good, so that the parliamentary system could return for the sake of unity. It introduced the caretaker government in 1996, seeking to shield elections from the poison of partisanship. These were not the acts of cowards, nor the deeds of opportunists. They were, for a time, the decisions of a party that still remembered its purpose.
Begum Khaleda Zia’s voice, once a symbol of quiet defiance, flickered briefly in our recent memory — a reminder of what principled resistance might have looked like. But reminders are not revolutions. Sentiment is not strategy. And the people — fists clenched in silence, waiting for leadership — have grown tired of a party that cannot decide whether to lead or to linger, whether to fight or to fade.
The paradox is brutal in its simplicity: to master the swing, the stronger hand must yield. But our politics has done the opposite. It muzzles courage, rewards cowardice, and mistakes manipulation for leadership. If BNP is to matter again, it must cease this pantomime of opposition and dare to become the alternative. It must cleanse itself — not in the name of power, but in the name of purpose. Not to seize victory, but to deserve it.
This, in the end, is no longer about elections. It is about moral rebirth. The nation is weary of slogans. It does not need puppets polished for the approval of foreign patrons. It yearns for a force that will stop pretending to represent the people, and start living among them. A force that will stop rehearsing democracy and start performing it — for real.
Only when the stronger hand learns humility, and the weaker hand finds strength, can BNP — and with it, Bangladesh — step up to the tee. Not to play the old game, rigged and rotten, but to rewrite it. Not to win the match, but to reclaim the course.
And perhaps, just perhaps, history will pause. And listen.
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Abdul Monaiem Kudrot Ullah, a retired captain of the Bangladesh navy, is an informed voice on institutional reform, geo-strategy, strategic governance and supply chain management.
