DHAKA: Bangladesh’s leading prime ministerial contender, Tarique Rahman, on Friday (Feb 6) rejected a proposal from his main rival for a unity government after elections next week, saying his party was confident of winning on its own.
Rahman, 60, who heads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), returned home in December after nearly two decades in exile in London following a youth-led uprising that toppled long-time leader Sheikh Hasina, a bitter rival of his mother, the country’s first woman Prime Minister, Khaleda Zia.
The BNP’s main rival in the Feb 12 election is the Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami, once banned but now resurgent.
The two parties governed together between 2001 and 2006, and Jamaat has said it is open to renewing the partnership for a unity government to help stabilise the country, whose giant garments industry was badly disrupted by months of turmoil in 2024.
Bangladesh has been run by an interim government since August 2024, when Hasina fled to long-time ally India, where she remains.
“How can I form a government with my political opponents, and then who would be in the opposition?” Rahman said in an interview at his party office, sitting beneath portraits of his mother and his father, a former president.
“I don’t know what will be their seat number, but if they are in the opposition, I hope to have them as a good opposition.”
His aides said the BNP was confident of winning more than two-thirds of the 300 parliamentary seats up for grabs. The party is contesting 292 of them, with allies vying for the rest.
Rahman declined to give a number but said, “we are confident that we’ll have enough to form a government”.
All opinion polls have forecast a BNP victory but also a stiff challenge from the Jamaat alliance, which includes a Gen Z party that emerged from the youth-led anti-Hasina protests.
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