Abdul Awal, 58, cannot hold back his excitement as for the first time in his life he would be voting in the 11th parliamentary polls on December 30.

Awal is one of the newly registered voters of 59 former enclaves in Lalmonirhat that became Bangladesh's territory through the implementation of Land Boundary Agreement (LBA) in 2015.

“It feels like a dream that my vote will be counted for selecting Bangladesh's government,” said Awal, a resident of Bhitorkuti under Kulaghat union.

Awal recalled how he used to visit the polling centres to witness the festivity centring elections during his childhood. But he never disclosed his identity during those times. “This time I will walk to the centre proudly and be a part of the event.”

Of the 59 former enclaves, which were Indian territory only a few years ago, two are in Kulaghat, two in Gotamari union, and the rest are in Jongra, Kuchlibari, Burimari, Srirampur, Jagatber, and Bawra unions of Patgram upazila.

Of the 10,317 people living in these former enclaves, 6.500 have been registered as voters, according to the district election office.

During a visit to Kulaghat on Monday, this correspondent found most areas covered with posters of the Awami League. Posters of Jatiya Oikyafront were seen at a few places.

Jatiya Party Co-chairman GM Quader is contesting from the Awami League-led 14-party grand alliance against Lalmonirhat BNP President Asadul Habib Dulu in Lalmonirhat-3, which includes Kulaghat union.

Both the candidates were trying to drum up support but they did not show up when the flood hit the area hard in 2014, said some of the locals.

“During the floods, no-one offered a single piece of bread but now they are coming to us seeking votes,” said Ayub Ali, a resident of Banshpochai, Kalughat.

Ayub, however, showed this correspondent the smart card, vulnerable group feeding (VGF) card, and fair price card that he received following the dissolution of the enclaves.

Pointing at the smart card, he said, “Look, the card says I am a Bangladeshi. I will cast my ballot using this card.”

The 50-year-old said his relatives living in the mainland once used to call his family “enclave people” but now no-one dares to do so.

Following the implementation of the LBA on July 31, 2015, the government set up houses, gave electricity connections, distributed VGF cards, VGD (Vulnerable Group development) cards, placed solar panels, constructed roads, tube-wells, toilets, established schools and clinics in some of the remote areas.

Many residents were unhappy as they did not have a candidate contesting with the electoral symbol “boat”, the Awami League's symbol.

Shahtun Khatun, 55, said she was “finally freed from the curse of enclave” because of the initiative by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Alluding to GM Quader, she said, “Nevertheless, I will vote for her [Hasina's] candidate, I will pick plough [election symbol of Jatiya Party],” said the resident of Bhitorkuti in Kalurghat.

Asadul Hasib Dulu, president of Lalmonirhat BNP and Oikyafront nominee, pledged employment opportunities. Dulu said, “We will focus on education of the residents, including taking responsibility of meritorious but poor students.”

In Lalmonirhat-1, Lalmonirhat Awami League President Motahar Hossain is running. The constituency has 55 former enclaves.

If elected, development of infrastructures would continue in the areas, said Motahar. The Awami League would set up schools, colleges, and create employment opportunities, he added.

The High Court today directed the law enforcers not to harass or arrest the activists, supporters and campaigners of any mayoral candidate of Barisal without any specific allegations till the election.

The HC bench of Justice Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury and Justice Md Ashraful Kamal passed the order following a writ petition filed by BNP mayoral candidate of Barisal city polls Mujibur Rahman Sarwar.

In the petition, Mujibur Rahman said the law enforcers are conducting indiscriminate arrest on his supporters, activists and election campaigners in violation of the Supreme Court guideline.

The SC in his guideline said nobody can be arrested without specific allegations and the police have to show their identity card during arresting in plain clothes and the police have to inform the relatives of the arrestees about the detention.

A six-member Election Exploratory Mission from the European Union arrived in Dhaka early today to assess the overall environment surrounding the national elections scheduled for December this year or early next year.

During the two-week visit, the EU delegation will talk to all the stakeholders -- government, political parties, Election Commission, security officials, civil society and media.

It is an independent professional exercise and not a political EU mission.

"They will have to decide if it is feasible, useful and advisable to deploy a full EU observation mission," EU Ambassador to Bangladesh Charles Whiteley told The Daily Star.

"The task of this mission will be to assess the scope, planning, budget, logistics and security of the main election observation mission," Mohammad Rafiqul Alam, foreign ministry's director general (additional charge) of public diplomacy wing, told reporters at the weekly briefing at the foreign ministry on Thursday.

The visit takes place at the invitation of the Election Commission and the foreign ministry has little to do in this regard, he added.

Based on the assessment report that will be submitted to the EU High Representative Josep Borrell, the EU will decide whether to send a full-fledged Election Observation Mission (EOM) before the next national elections.

The EU delegation in Dhaka has not made public the schedules of the mission's activities in Dhaka.

"So far there is no plan for media engagement. Their [mission members'] names have also not been made public because the delegation wants to be fully independent and unbiased," a diplomatic source said.

Meanwhile, election analysts said assessment of the mission is a determining factor for other international observers to decide if they would also come to Bangladesh to observing the elections.

The EU did not send election observers in 2018.

EU's Election Exploratory Mission will leave the country on July 23.

In the run-up to the national election, the international community is showing increasing interest in Bangladesh, which is due to the prevailing geopolitical landscape as well as its prospect of becoming a larger economy in the coming years. The country is going to graduate from the Least Developed Country (LDC) to the Developing Country category in 2026 by fulfilling the criteria based on per capita income, human asset index, and economic vulnerability index. It is currently implementing Sustainable Development Goals and has made progress in many areas compared to its peers.

Bangladesh's economic success has been due to its relatively steady growth compared to many developing countries. In the pre-Covid era, the average growth of the economy was over six percent for about a decade. But starting in early 2020 and after the Ukraine war in February 2022, the economy experienced some dampening, leading to slower growth. Still, while in FY2020 the GDP growth was 3.45 percent, it went up to 6.03 percent during FY2023. With accelerated growth, there has also been social progress. The poverty rate has declined, and so have child and maternal mortality, while life expectancy has increased. Bangladesh now aspires to be an upper middle-income country by 2031 and a developed country by 2041.

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Are individual districts falling behind, while Bangladesh develops as a whole?

Often, the growth story is linked to the so-called stability narrative. It is claimed that since there are no political disturbances from opposition parties, the government could succeed in navigating the country forward.

Ironically, under the shadow of stability, the quality of economics and politics has been compromised. Economic growth has not been coupled with the expected outcomes. Urgent issues such as job creation for the youth, domestic resource mobilisation, efficient public expenditure, and higher private investment need more attention. Inequality continues to rise. The latest Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) 2022 reveals that the Gini coefficient has increased. This implies that the rise in per capita income has not been distributed evenly across the population. And shocks such as the pandemic, natural disasters and inflationary pressure continue to push poor and low-income households further behind.

The manifestation of inequality is the fast-growing number of the superrich in Bangladesh. Wealth creation is good but only with an even distribution. Moreover, not all of this wealth is earned, as the wealthy include loan defaulters, beneficiaries of undue government support, and rentseekers.

Higher growth has also not created enough jobs. The Labour Force Survey (LFS) 2022 indicates that average unemployment has declined from 4.2 percent in 2016-17 to 3.6 percent in 2022. But the definition of unemployment is based on the conventional definition of the International Labour Organization's (ILO) unrealistic benchmark, which considers a person employed if that person has worked even an hour in a week. Moreover, unemployment among the young population is much higher than the national average. The LFS 2022 has not revealed the youth unemployment rate yet. However, the youth unemployment rate was 10.6 percent in the LFS 2016-17.

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‘Louha tribhuj’ and the political economy of development

Despite stability, private investment has not been energised for long. And stability has not reduced unpredictability. On average, private investment has been hovering around 24 percent of GDP, which is inadequate for a growing economy. Due to low domestic private investment, there is slow foreign direct investment (FDI). Despite the fact that the government has been trying to attract FDI through favourable policies, there is still a lack of enthusiasm. Though Bangladesh is a growing economy, and the market size is expected to grow, it is yet to become a production hub for international manufacturers. The government has allocated land for special economic zones to both private and foreign investors, but the progress has generally been slow. Ease of doing business must be ensured by improving infrastructure, removing red-tapism, ensuring policy clarity, adopting technology, and improving human resource quality.

Stability has protected the nexus between capital and political power. Massive conflicts of interest prevail in the system since many policymakers have stakes in fiscal, monetary, trade and other sectoral policies. Many in the periphery of political power have also been rehabilitated and rewarded. Hence, they do not want any changes (or disturbances) in this stability. Of course, democracy would require accounting of all unearned money and transparency of public expenditure.

The unique location in the Bay of Bengal, coupled with its economic rise, has increased Bangladesh's importance in the region. Our stability has been supported by some international partners. As such, Bangladesh has been conducting a balancing act between two competing countries, China and India, quite well. Both China and India are important trading partners and have provided us with loans of various sizes. Naturally, they have an active interest in Bangladesh.

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Five concerns that the FY2024 budget fails to address

Bangladesh's geographical position has also increased its geostrategic significance for the US as the latter aims to contain Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific region. The current US position is to deal with Bangladesh-related issues through the prism of India. Stability is important for the US, too, but not at the cost of democracy. The US has made this clear in its recent policies, which have been geared towards promoting democracy in Bangladesh.

Additionally, the EU Election Exploratory Mission is currently visiting Bangladesh. They will undertake an assessment of the political environment and electoral framework, in close partnership and consultation with all stakeholders.

These developed countries are important stakeholders as Bangladesh's economy is connected to them through trade, remittances, investment, education, science and technology, and much more. Therefore, it is natural that they would have a keen interest in Bangladesh's politics and election administration.

But, ideally, this should not have been the case. Bangladesh should have been capable of holding an acceptable, high-quality national election on its own. Unfortunately, the credibility of the past two general elections has been questioned. The stability of power has probably been consolidated, but democracy has weakened. A transition to democracy and the nurturing of the democratic process will be painful and difficult. And the upcoming polls will be a test for Bangladesh to prove its capability and willingness to hold a high-quality election that will not be questioned within or outside the country. A democratic culture is crucial for sustaining the economic growth the country has achieved so far, and for distributing the benefits of this growth among all citizens of the country.

Dr Fahmida Khatun is executive director at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) and non-resident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council. Views expressed in this article are the author's own.

Last December, BNP managed to create a strong momentum with successive divisional rallies, defying obstacles from the ruling party cadres and law enforcement agencies. But it lost that momentum when it tried to hold a rally in Dhaka. Since then, the party – which has been out of office for more than 16 years – has been trying to regain that thrust. This time around, BNP held a series of programmes around Dhaka and got some traction thanks to its supporters, leading up to its grand rally of July 28. The party was also able to hold the rally at its preferred venue, in front of its Nayapaltan headquarters. Tens of thousands of BNP workers joined in, defying myriad odds and obstacles. It turned out to be a mammoth rally and, encouraged by the turnout, BNP announced sit-in programmes at five entry points of the capital the very next day, presumably to cut off Dhaka from the rest of the country for several hours between 11am and 4pm. But the sit-in failed in the face of the ruling party's strong presence on the street and the aggressive attitude of the police. And again, BNP lost its momentum.

Since then, a few questions have been circulating in political circles: why did BNP go for such a programme? What did it achieve? And what will the party do now that the national election is just a few months away?

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For every rally, there is a counter-rally

After the announcement of BNP's one-point demand – resignation of the ruling government for a caretaker government to oversee elections – movement on July 12, the party took only 16 days to announce the sit-in demos. Coordination among the party fronts and associate bodies, which requires time, is imperative to make such ambitious programmes successful, but there seems to have been a lack of coordination among BNP leaders in this regard. Even some of the party's senior leaders were in the dark about these programmes till they were announced. The decision of a sit-in demo of such a scale, without much time on its hands, indicates that BNP was in a hurry.

There is no denying that the party has a strategy in place to achieve its goal of the next election being held under a nonpartisan, election-time government. But it seems that the plan may not be as well thought out as BNP supporters would like. The party's leadership felt charged up seeing the large-scale turnout in the rally, but they underestimated the government's strength and strategic abilities. This explains why BNP couldn't succeed entirely in its programme, and now seems to have backtracked from its tough stance. After the sit-in, the party announced demos in districts and cities across Bangladesh, which is a deviation from its Dhaka-centric plans. The lack of coordination and confidence in terms of holding large rallies and showdown-like programmes can demoralise grassroots BNP supporters, who are paying a high price for the erroneous judgement calls of the party's top brass.

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Can BNP really put up a good fight?

For the longest time, BNP has argued that the government and law enforcement agencies are obstructing their peaceful rallies, and the events which unfolded on July 29 has once again lent credence to their clams. The attack by ruling party men, in the presence of the law enforcement agencies, has laid bare just how "democratic" the government will be in the lead up to the elections. Of course, some BNP men did engage in violent activities during the sit-ins, but the previous programmes of BNP were largely peaceful, despite instigations. Either way, BNP knows that any violence from its own party will eventually work against itself. And this time, the party is being careful as it was accused of conducting arson attacks in 2013 and trying to sabotage the January 5, 2014 election.

Back in 2013, the party did not come up with alternative strategies when they saw that the blockades were not working. At least this time around, they have backtracked from their plans and proposed an alternative when they realised that the sit-in had failed. This could be interpreted as the party being more mature and wiser in its current decisions.

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What is the point of attacking BNP rallies?

BNP's real loss in all this was giving the upper hand to the ruling party. There was no doubt that the ruling party felt pressure, especially after the composed and largely organised grand rally. But the following day, when ruling party cadres were able to easily disperse the BNP demonstrators, it worked like a morale-boosting tonic for the former. They felt more confident about being on the streets and not giving anything away to the BNP. This was essential for the Awami League at a time when it seemed to be under pressure from different directions to hold a free and fair election. Now it remains to be seen whether BNP can once again revive their momentum and give the ruling party a run for their money.

Mohammad Al-Masum Molla is chief reporter at The Daily Star.