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 placed public relations agents on popular media discuss this refreshing approach and focus on the former two-time prime minister's steadfast commitment to not compromise with an undemocratic foe and the culmination of a years-long familial separation, the BNP may well have been cruising on the journey to wiping the memories of the horrendous five-year period when the BNP was last in power.

In truth, every day since August 5, 2024, has been a day of opportunity the BNP has missed. The Awami League's ouster, the mountain of legal troubles facing Awami League politicians, and the general rejection of Awami League influence across all facets of life in the country have certainly been a victory for the BNP. Yet, to solidify this victory, the presumptive prime political force in Bangladesh has to distance themselves from the one that has just been booted.

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The BNP faithful might say that this is an unnecessary exercise. The BNP has forever been the furthest possible thing from the Awami League, due to the decades-long animosity between the rivals. Yet, in the minds of those who remember 2001-2006 and those who don't remember that time but have been told stories of corruption, misrule, and the perennial threat of bombings that haunted those days, BNP is part of the same political culture that birthed the authoritarian juggernaut that the Awami League became.

In fact, history supports this perception. The BNP and the Awami League were the two major stakeholders of the post-Ershad democratic restructuring, and they had subsequently split the honours in the four elections since, whose credibility has been largely accepted. While the Awami League has emerged victorious—by a long margin at that—in the cursed contest of inflicting misery on the people of Bangladesh, the BNP too has been a participant.

There is little doubt that the BNP is poised to benefit greatly from the aftermath of August 5, 2024, but if the BNP wants to be seen by history in a light that is a shade separate from that which cloaks the Awami League, they must shake things up.

The political culture that seeks to elevate one politician, or a political family, to a position any greater than a regular citizen of the country is a political culture that must end. It was refreshing to hear that some in the BNP leadership had called for more sense on Tuesday night, but that call went unheard. For millions in Dhaka, it was like being haunted by a nightmare, when yet again, a politician's flight abroad took priority over the journey of every ambulance, emergency vehicle, public bus, or a simple homebound employee after a long day.

All BNP achieved on Tuesday night was reassuring themselves that they too could call on the numbers that the Awami League boasted in its heyday. But people already know that the BNP is the biggest party in the country now. What people don't know is if the BNP has the capacity to show the bare minimum respect to its potential constituents, which AL never showed in all its years of power.

This lack of respect, this disregard for public welfare over years and years, is what makes a popular, elected government fester into one that needs to turn its guns on the public to stay in power.

The BNP, on Tuesday night, made a clear show of its lack of respect for the people whose support they hope will carry them into power. In the next election, the support of the blindly faithful may just carry the party over the line into the parliament (or the presidency, depending on constitutional reforms), but if their attitude towards the public does not change, they too run the risk of eventually festering into some form of the disease that kills before it's violently cured.

Azmin Azran is digital features coordinator at The Daily Star.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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