Dhaka, Dec 31 (IANS) Bangladesh’s Awami League on Wednesday accused the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government of paving the way for Islamist forces and criminalised leadership by banning the party from contesting the February 2026 elections.
The party claimed that the forthcoming polls, presented as a return to democracy, are actually built on systematic exclusion.
“By banning the Awami League, the country’s largest political party with the support of nearly 60 per cent of voters, the Yunus government has ensured that a majority of citizens will be locked out of the electoral process. An election that excludes the majority is not democratic; it is engineered,” the Awami League stated.
According to the Awami League, the suspension of its registration by the Bangladesh Election Commission, followed by legal prohibitions under the Yunus administration, was not a neutral act of reform but a “calculated political strike”. The party stated that, unable to defeat the Awami League in a free contest, the Yunus-led interim government chose to remove it altogether—a move it described not as an “electoral correction", but "mass disenfranchisement born of fear".
“No credible democracy bans its largest political party and still claims legitimacy. Democracies compete; authoritarian systems eliminate rivals. By crossing this line, Yunus has turned the state into a political weapon and the election into a controlled exercise with a pre-decided outcome,” the party stated.
“Voters are not being punished for crimes or corruption. They are being punished for who they support. Their ballots are rejected before they are even cast. When a government fears voters more than it trusts elections, democracy does not merely weaken; it collapses,” it added.
The Awami League said the primary reason Yunus wants to keep the party out of the February 2026 election is that its participation would prevent Islamist extremists and discredited criminal networks from gaining power. While acknowledging that personal vendetta may exist, the party argued that the strategy is not ---revenge ---but exclusion--because only by removing the Awami League can these extremist forces realistically enter office.
The Awami League warned that when elections are stripped of real choice, the damage does not remain confined to the ballot box but spreads outward, destabilising the entire political system.
“History is unambiguous: elections without competition accelerate radicalisation, legitimise political violence, and ultimately destroy public faith in voting as a tool for change. When people realise outcomes are pre-decided, ballots lose meaning and extremism fills the vacuum,” it noted
Stressing that the international community must not legitimise an election conducted on a rigged political field, the Awami League said, “Observation without inclusion is endorsement by silence”.
--IANS
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