BNP’s show of force on Dhaka’s Airport Road and a political culture that refuses to change

January 10, 2025

DHAKA – The former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia on Tuesday embarked on a long-anticipated journey abroad for medical treatment. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson—whose imprisonment, health deterioration, and subsequent treatment had become a politically charged issue for years during the Awami League regime—has gained tremendous sympathy for the hardship she has endured. As a result, her journey to London, which reunited her with her eldest son Tarique Rahman after seven long years, has become something of a watershed moment in Bangladesh’s recent political history.

The BNP, who had been politically stifled by the Awami League, understandably looked to capitalise on this moment. However, the way BNP activists descended upon much of North Dhaka on Tuesday night to bid their chairperson farewell, choking Dhaka’s most vital artery—the Airport Road—with sheer numbers is an approach that lacked creativity and freshness. It stank of an all too familiar tendency of political parties in our country to construct cults of personality, something much of Bangladesh has violently rejected in the recent past and has been trying desperately to move past.

For an outside observer, it must be baffling that the BNP, having witnessed what the actions of the last 15 years did to the Awami League in three short weeks this summer, never even considered the fact that if they didn’t play fast and loose with people’s precious time like Sheikh Hasina used to, it would set a nice contrast in the minds of voters and the young generation.

For the BNP, this last Tuesday was an opportunity. If they could only get Khaleda Zia on the plane without majorly disrupting life in the world’s densest city, have some strategically