Can Bangladesh’s Awami League survive election ban, ex-PM Hasina’s exile?

The party that ruled Bangladesh with an iron fist won’t be on the ballot in February, and its future is uncertain.

Dhaka, Bangladesh – As boatman Ripon Mridha washed his feet early in the morning after a night of fishing in Bangladesh’s mighty Padma River, his eyes scanned the walls and shutters of the shops in the neighbourhood market.

Until recently, the neighbourhood in central Bangladesh’s Rajbari district was plastered with large posters and banners, with the faces of local politicians belonging to former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party looming large.

Today, those signs are gone, leaving little traces of a party that ruled over Bangladesh for 15 years before a student-led uprising in 2024 toppled Hasina’s iron-fisted government and forced her into exile in India, her close ally.

After the uprising, Hasina’s Awami League was banned from all political activities, while a special tribunal, ironically founded by Hasina herself in 2010 to try political opponents, sentenced her to death in absentia for her role in the killing of 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.