DHAKA, Bangladesh – Early in the morning after a night of fishing on Bangladesh’s majestic Padma River, boatman Ripon Mridda washed his feet and scanned the walls and shutters of shops in a local market.
Until recently, neighborhoods in central Bangladesh’s Rajbari district were plastered with large posters and banners featuring the faces of local politicians affiliated with former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party.
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Now those signs have faded, leaving little trace of the party that ruled Bangladesh for 15 years until a student-led uprising toppled her iron-fisted government in 2024, forcing her into exile in close ally India.
After the uprising, Hasina’s Awami League was banned from all political activities, but ironically, a special tribunal set up by Hasina herself in 2010 to try political opponents sentenced her to death in absentia for her role in killing more than 1,400 people during the protests.
On February 12, the country of 170 million people is scheduled to vote in its first parliamentary election since Hasina’s ouster.
Mridha, a lifelong Awami League voter, said she felt little enthusiasm for elections because the party she supported was banned. He may still vote, but faces the dilemma of who to support as the Awami League boat symbol will not appear on the ballot paper.
The boatman, who is about 50 years old, said his family worries that if they don’t vote, they will be seen as Awami League supporters in a country where Hasina and her party today draw widespread anger over the decades of killings, enforced disappearances, torture and political repression they have overseen.
Under Hasina’s rule, Awami League’s two main opponents, the Jamaat-e-Islami Party and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), were systematically persecuted. Jamaat was banned, some of its leaders were executed, and many others were imprisoned. Thousands of BNP leaders have been arrested, including former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who died in December. Her son, current BNP leader Tariq Rahman, lived in exile in London for 17 years before returning to Bangladesh in December.
Widespread political violence continues to undermine election preparations in Bangladesh, with leaders of the BNP, Jamaat and other political parties killed in recent weeks. But now, like supporters of other political parties, Awami League’s rank-and-file supporters are no longer immune from the outrage caused by their leaders’ actions.
“If we don’t vote, we risk being the only ones elected,” Murida told Al Jazeera. “So our family will go to the polls.”
Conversations with people who have long voted for Awami League in areas it once ruled revealed a divided atmosphere.
Many people say they will continue to go to the polls, but some say they may not vote at all.
Like Gopalganj’s rickshaw driver Solaiman Mia, it is the stronghold of the Hasina family and the hometown of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh. His tomb lies in a southern district of Dhaka, an enduring symbol of the Awami League’s strong grip on the region. Hasina has won a landslide victory in Gopalganj in every election since 1991.
Mia has made it clear that neither she nor her family will vote this year. “An election without a boat on the ballot is not an election,” he told Al Jazeera, a sentiment echoed by many residents of Gopalganj.
“Awami League is back”
The Awami League’s headquarters in central Dhaka’s Gulistan area was destroyed and set on fire during the riots and is now abandoned. Since then, the building has been used as a shelter for homeless people and partially as a public toilet.
Abdul Hamid, a street vendor outside his office, said he had not seen any Awami League activists near the area in recent months.
“There will be no Awami League supporters here,” he said. “Even if someone was a supporter, they would never admit it. The Awami League has faced crises before, but never so close to extinction.”
Nearby, another street vendor, Sagor, sells woolen scarves emblazoned with symbols of the BNP and its former ally and now rival Jamaat-e-Islami party.
“The scarves of the parties are selling well,” he said as pedestrians surrounded him.
Still, some Awami League supporters are optimistic about the party’s revival.
Arman, a former leader of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, the Awami League’s student wing, said the party may be staying strategically silent, but it is too entrenched to disappear from Bangladeshi politics.
“Awami League will come back,” he told Al Jazeera. “And if that happens, we will be back with Sheikh Hasina.”
But Rezaul Karim Roni, a Dhaka-based political analyst and editor of Giovanna magazine, is not so sure. He thinks it will be difficult for Awami League to survive the February elections.
“If elections are held without Awami League, Awami League voters will gradually go through a form of reconciliation at the local level,” Rony told Al Jazeera. “They will be absorbed locally, align themselves with the influential forces and political parties that control their areas, and in that way begin to rebuild their daily lives.”
As a result, it will be difficult for Awami League to regain its support base once the elections are over, Rony said. He said that while some supporters of the party still see no future for the party without her, a sizable group within the party remains dissatisfied with the authoritarian rule she had when she was in power.
“It will be extremely difficult and almost impossible for Awami League to return to its previous political position as its supporters are divided with and without Hasina,” Rony said.
“I feel like I’ve been wiped out politically.”
Other analysts argue that the recent surge in support for Jamaat-e-Islami may paradoxically provide a reference point for a possible future Awami League revival. The Jamaat supported Pakistan during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence, but its critics, including Hasina, have repeatedly used its role to challenge its credibility.
Under Hasina, the party was banned twice and its leaders were hanged or imprisoned. Still, it survived and is now on track to record its best performance in February elections, according to polls.
Anu Muhammad, a former economics professor at Jahangirnagar University, told Al Jazeera: “The Jamaat’s current level of activity, influence and assertiveness can be seen as a show of dominance, but also paradoxically a blessing of sorts for the Awami League.”
Muhammad said the Awami League’s appeal goes far beyond formal political structures and is unlikely to be completely wiped out politically. “Awami League is not just about leadership,” he said. “It’s tied to cultural, social and other forces.”
A pre-election survey by the International Republican Institute, a US think tank focused on democratic governance, suggested that Awami League still maintained a support base of about 11 percent.
However, the party has not participated in the ongoing election campaign, and instead its leaders have been seen organizing events from India, including a controversial speech, the first since Hasina’s ouster, at the “Save Bangladesh Democracy” event at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in New Delhi.
“To topple this enemy foreign puppet regime at all costs, the brave sons and daughters of Bangladesh must defend and restore the constitution written in the blood of martyrs, regain independence, protect sovereignty and restore democracy,” Hasina said in a pre-recorded audio message.
An outraged Dhaka city government said it was “surprised and shocked” that Indian authorities would allow such an event to take place.
But back home, Hasina’s party has struggled to assert political relevance, raising questions about its survival.
Michael Kugelman, a senior South Asia fellow at the Atlantic Council, called the vote a “starred election,” arguing that by strict democratic standards, an election in Bangladesh without Awami League could not be considered completely reliable.
At the same time, he argued, the Awami League – in the eyes of many Bangladeshis – had lost its right to be treated as a legitimate political party due to the repression overseen by Hasina and early efforts to tilt the electoral playing field. The 2014, 2018 and 2024 elections, in which Hasina won by a landslide, were all widely seen as rigged, with opposition parties boycotting and rivals cracking down.
Still, Kugelman said that due to the nature of South Asia’s dynastic parties, parties rarely disappear.
“The Awami League is in a bad position, but it is essentially out of the political scene in Bangladesh indefinitely. We should not rule out the possibility of a future revival. The political situation can change very quickly,” he told Al Jazeera.
Kugelman compared the party’s current crisis to that suffered by its bitter rival, the BNP, under Hasina, when the main opposition party struggled to mount a meaningful political or electoral challenge and has now re-emerged as the most likely candidate for government.
He said the Awami League is likely to adopt a “wait and see strategy”. As long as Hasina remains politically active, she is likely to “want to stay in the game” and may announce her US-based son Sajeeb Wazed as the successor to the dynasty.
“It may take some time,” Kugelman said. “Given the political developments in the region, politics can be very unstable. If a path opens up in the future and the Awami League is in a favorable position to operate as a viable political force, there is a good chance of a resurgence. But for now, it is essentially dead in the water.”
For Rajbari boatman Mrida, this does not bode well and the uncertainty over the party’s future is deeply worrying.
“My father used to talk about how Awami League struggled after Bangabandhu. [as Hasina’s father is fondly called] He was assassinated,” he said, referring to Rahman’s assassination during the 1975 military coup that plunged the Awami League into its first major crisis.
“But this year feels like a political sweep.”
