Several economists, known for their economical use of words, find themselves echoing a sentiment on the recent polling day. After 2 p.m., Dr. Hossain Zillur Rahman took to social media platform X, tweeting enigmatically about 'The presence of absence.' It wasn't challenging to grasp his implication. Subsequently, reports emerged indicating a voter turnout slightly over 26 per cent until 3 :00pm, suggesting that a majority of voters saw little purpose in going to a polling centre when the choices were seemingly limited to the Awami League and its proxy candidates. Even if we entertain the chief election commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal's assertion of a 42 per cent turnout, with an unconvincing rate of voting making nearly one-third of the votes cast in the final hour, this figure falls well below the average voter participation in elections held under caretaker administrations in 1996, 2001, and 2008. The 2008 election, marking the commencement of AL's current rule w...

It seems that some of us are quite intrigued by the results of the Union Parishad (UP) elections that show official nominees of the ruling party, Awami League, having lost in a big way. According to Prothom Alo, AL nominees’ percentage of losing the electoral battle gradually went up from 24 per cent in the first phase to 49 per cent in the fourth phase. Many critics of the government see it as a sign of serious erosion of popular support to the ruling party.  The fact, however, remains that most of the winners are so-called rebels of the AL and these elections were not a direct contest with AL’s main rival, the Bangladesh nationalist party (BNP), as the latter boycotted these elections. The Information Minister, Hasan Mahmud is right to point out the rebels' win is also AL’s win. However, his assertion that the Awami League is the only alternative to the Awami League is quite a different and much more serious issue. It raises a whole range of critical questions, including whether ...