Ban On Awami League Shows Fair Elections Are Impossible Under Yunus’s Shadow – OpEd
It has been over seven months since the decision to bar Bangladesh’s Awami League from contesting future elections. The interim administration led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has defended the move as part of a reform and accountability drive. However, that explanation is flimsy at best.
The ban came before any comprehensive, independent probe. If accountability were genuinely the goal, the interim government would have prioritised investigations and trials, not rushed to remove a major electoral competitor.
Moreover, even if individual Awami League leaders are guilty of serious crimes linked to the 2024 violence, that does not logically justify collective political disenfranchisement. Electoral reform and criminal accountability are being deliberately conflated here.
But the barring of the Awami League on such wishy-washy grounds is only a symptom. The real problem is that genuinely fair elections are no longer possible under the current political arrangement.
At the centre of the controversy is the Election Commission, whose role as a neutral referee has come under sustained attack since it cancelled the registration of the Awami League, the country’s largest and most electorally entrenched party. For many observers, the ban marks the point at which doubts about the commission’s independence hardened into near certainty.
A ban with sweeping consequences
The official justification for excluding the Awami League rests on allegations against senior party figures linked to violence during the 2024 protests that preceded the fall of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina. Interim authorities have framed the move as necessary to restore accountability and prevent those accused of abuses from returning to power.
Yet the scale of the decision is unprecedented in Bangladesh’s electoral history. The Awami League is not a marginal actor but a mass political organisation that governed for more than a decade and won three consecutive national elections. Removing it from the ballot effectively excludes a substantial segment of the electorate from meaningful participation.
Such exclusion undermines the basic premise of competitive elections. Accountability for past violence should be pursued through courts and due process, not through administrative measures that predetermine who can and cannot compete for power.
The Awami League has denounced the Election Commission as “illegal” and accused it of acting under the direction of the interim government. It argues that no election conducted without its participation can credibly claim to reflect the will of the people. This claim resonates even among some of Hasina’s long-time critics.
The commission’s vanishing neutrality
The ban has only served to cast a spotlight on the undemocratic way in which the current Election Commission was formed and how it has operated since late 2024. The body was appointed swiftly after Hasina’s ouster, with limited consultation across the political spectrum. Its leadership has repeatedly echoed the interim government’s emphasis on reforms before elections, even as timelines have slipped far beyond constitutional limits.
Those concerns were amplified when the chief election commissioner publicly suggested that polls would be conducted in line with the interim government’s wishes. In a political system where election bodies are meant to insulate the vote from executive pressure, his statement bolstered perceptions that the commission lacks institutional distance from those in power.
Since then, the commission has endorsed repeated delays to announcing an election date, citing the need for reforms bundled under a loosely defined reform charter. This has created a self-reinforcing cycle. Reforms justify delays, delays entrench unelected authority, and the commission provides procedural cover for both.
The exclusion of the Awami League is the most consequential outcome of this alignment. By enforcing a ban that changes the players in the elections, the commission has moved beyond its regulatory mandate into political selection, a role incompatible with its constitutional mandate.
Stability versus legitimacy
Supporters of the interim government say that Bangladesh’s recent history of disputed elections and unrest necessitates extraordinary measures. To them, stabilising the system is worth the cost of excluding the Awami League.
But that stability is in itself quite brittle. Elections and democracies don’t derive legitimacy from administrative neatness. Legitimacy comes from broad participation and credible competition. An electoral process in which a dominant party is absent, they argue, risks producing a government that is formally elected but politically hollow.
There is also discomfort about the prolonged transition beyond party politics. Some fears extended rule by unelected authorities, along with the delays and exclusions that stem from this, could erode institutional balance and public trust.
This is already happening. Bangladesh’s Election Commission, once seen as a flawed but essential arbiter, is now viewed by many as an instrument of the interim order. The ban on the Awami League has come to symbolise that shift, crystallising concerns that the commission no longer operates independently of the political power it is meant to oversee.
As the country looks toward an uncertain electoral horizon, the central question is whether polls can command legitimacy. Without the participation of all major political forces and without a visibly autonomous election authority, many observers believe the answer is already clear. Under Yunus’s shadow, the prospect of a fair and inclusive vote appears increasingly remote.
