With voting set for February 12, Bangladesh’s general election is under intense global scrutiny amid explosive allegations from exiled diplomat Mohammad Harun Al Rashid. In a revealing interview with Sri Lanka’s Trinko Centre for Strategic Studies, he predicted the polls would mark the darkest chapter in the country’s electoral past.
Rashid targeted Muhammad Yunus, the interim chief advisor, accusing him of a long pattern of cosmetic cover-ups for deep-seated failures. ‘Everything Yunus touches turns into a so-called beauty, but this election is Bangladesh’s most grotesque spectacle yet—not hyperbole,’ he said. He warned Yunus cannot dodge responsibility forever.
Framing the contest not as democracy but as infighting within the ‘Jihadi coalition’ responsible for Sheikh Hasina’s 2024 ouster, Rashid pitted BNP—structurally moderate but ideologically Brotherhood-like—against Jamaat-e-Islami, a Hamas equivalent. Both, he claimed, reject democracy in favor of radical Islamism.
True democratic forces have been sidelined, Rashid charged, as Yunus rigs outcomes to favor allies like Jamaat and NCP militants who orchestrated quota protests as suicide operations in 2024’s violence. Bangladesh, once a beacon of secularism, now risks terror’s grip—a tragedy for global humanity, he said.
Yunus’s tenure has erased Hasina’s economic miracles, secular foundations, and war of independence ethos in a calculated assault. ‘It’s savagery versus an entire civilization,’ Rashid thundered. On Yunus’s reformer facade in the West, he scoffed: a master manipulator who charmed elites while fooling no one who knew him up close.
These revelations amplify fears of a flawed vote, potentially plunging Bangladesh deeper into instability as the nation decides its path amid cries of foul play.