Do these elections indicate a strategy to beat populist politics?
India witnessed a tumultuous time between May 1996 and October 1999 when coalition governments came and left in quick succession.
Bangladesh, since 2018, has been classified as a 'moderate autocracy.'
Since the middle of the 2000s, the world has witnessed a precipitous decline in democratic countries. After almost three decades of proliferation of democratic governance, described by Samuel Huntington as the Third Wave of democracy, the third reverse wave is sweeping the globe.
Bangladesh’s declining score in the EIU Democracy Index should provide an opportunity to discuss not only how EIU has rated Bangladesh, but also how others have characterised the country’s state of democracy—or lack thereof.
The absence of democratic behaviour is no longer hidden under the carpet.
If AL’s victory in the 2014 election was a hollow one, the 2024 victory in the making is nothing short of a Pyrrhic one—a victory which inflicts so much damage that it cannot be considered worthwhile.
As the country is heading towards an exercise that the incumbent is calling an election, it is imperative that we understand what is in the making.
The opening phrase of a soliloquy uttered by Prince Hamlet in Act 3, Scene 1 of the play Hamlet—“To be or not to be?”—was about life and death, not about politics; yet perhaps this aptly captures the current US political scene. Facing a decision of great significance, the Democratic Party leaders of the House of Representatives seem to be in the same quandary.
The wave of terrorist attacks in Sri Lankan churches and hotels frequented by foreigners, which killed at least 290 people and injured around 500, is astounding both in scale and sophistication in planning.
The idiomatic expression, “Don't throw the baby out with the bath water”, is not something we expect to use every day. The origin of it
What happened in the Ducsu “election”—which was made into a farcical show by the Dhaka University authorities, including the Vice Chancellor and the teachers of the institution—requires no elaboration.
Oscar Wilde wrote in his 1889 essay “The Decay of Lying” that, “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.” Little did he know
Politics have gone missing from Bangladesh. This may sound naïve, considering that the country had a national election less than two months ago and several elections are upcoming.
Shah Ahmed Shafi, head of the Hefazat-e-Islam (HI), is in the news again. In a sermon delivered to the parents of the Darul-Ulum
In the next 24 hours Bangladesh will have a national election. The question is what kind of an election will it be? It has already become unprecedented on many counts: the incumbent is seeking a third term, an election is being held under an incumbent government which is being participated in
With the 2018 election at our doorstep, various kinds of polarisation and reconfiguration of political forces are taking place. Among them, the role of Islamists has drawn substantial attention. Islamists have not enjoyed as much prominence in previous elections as they have in 2018.
The statement of the heads of the diplomatic missions of the European Union, Norway and Sweden in Dhaka on Monday calling to “ensure a genuine, credible, inclusive and transparent electoral process” in the upcoming parliamentary election warrants our attention.
