In my last column preceding BNP's October 28 rally, I said that the day would be important for both the main opposition and the ruling Awami League, and the party getting the upper hand in the rally would be ahead in the upcoming general election. After the rally, it became crystal clear that the ruling party got the upper hand, while the opposition faced a setback as it had not been prepared for the violence that unfolded on the day, driving the BNP members away from the rally venue. There is no doubt that the country is heading towards a long-drawn confrontational politics ahead of the election. True, the rival camps were already at loggerheads, but the situation just worsened after the fateful rally.

Let's look at the opposition camp first. BNP, which has remained out of power for 17 years, has been holding rallies and road marches in Dhaka and around the country peacefully as part of its anti-government campaign for the last one and a half years, drawing increasingly large crowds. Until the grand rally in Nayapaltan, Dhaka on October 28, the party was successful in keeping its street programmes peaceful—despite provocative rhetoric from some AL leaders and non-cooperation from the law enforcers. Throughout the non-violent movement, BNP was also able to distance itself from the violent street programmes that it had launched before the 2014 election. At the time, the party faced severe criticism at home and abroad for mindless violence and arson attacks, killing and injuring many, to foil the election. However, throughout its current movement, BNP high-ups announced their street agitation programmes very carefully, and were able to keep their activists in check during demonstrations.

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What will happen on October 28?

But it suffered a setback as the October 28 rally suddenly turned violent, leaving a policeman and a BNP leader dead, and injuring scores more, as campaigners clashed with the police. The day also saw a return of vandalism and arson attacks on vehicles. Could this violence have been averted? I think it most certainly could have. BNP leaders should have had more of the restraint and patience that they had shown earlier. Media reports said BNP men attacked AL activists, and then police and the Awami League men went on to disperse the BNP members from the rally. The police's role was questionable from the beginning, since they were instrumental in barring thousands of BNP activists from entering Dhaka to attend the rally.

This violence triggered BNP to go for the typical hartals and blockades. Many of the party leaders said they had no option but to toughen up their programmes as their peaceful rallies had not been effective. The government did not pay heed to their demands at all, so it was inevitable that at one point BNP would have to employ tougher measures such as general strikes and blockades to bring life to a halt. But it had intended to do that much later, if at all; what happened on October 28 forced its hand. Regardless, given how the current regime has everything under its iron-fisted control, BNP's chances of success in having its demands realised appear to be very slim.

The more interesting point concerns Jamaat-e-Islami. It did not get permission to hold a rally. The media reported that police would be very tough if Jamaat made any such attempts. But we saw that Jamaat held it peacefully and police did not obstruct it. Why Jamaat was allowed to have a rally is not clear. True, Jamaat is not a banned political party. But how were they allowed to hold it without permission? The curious case of Jamaat may answer many questions regarding BNP's violent rally.

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Could BNP have avoided violence on Oct 28?

The ruling Awami League is upbeat after the rally. Although very few ruling party members took to the streets on the rally day, they were there carrying sticks. Police and the ruling party men were on the streets to contain the BNP and Jamaat. But then, that is not quite the role of the ruling party men, is it? One must ask: who gave the AL men the authority to guard the streets with sticks? If they have to take to the streets to protect public property, what are the police supposed to do? This trend is nothing new in Bangladesh's politics, though; it seems to have become the norm.

One can assume that after the October 28 rally, the ruling party is feeling relieved about the upcoming election, and will possibly be unchallenged in the battle for the ballot. BNP has been saying that it will not take part in the election if it is held under the current regime, but the way BNP is cornered with most of its senior leaders on the run or in custody, it is almost impossible for the party to join the polls anyway.

Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader has warned the BNP against tough programmes. Referring to what happened at Shapla Chattar in Dhaka on May 5, 2013, he said the consequences would be far worse for the BNP. Addressing a massive rally of AL's youth wing at Bangabandhu Avenue on Monday afternoon, he said, "What happened at Shapla Chattar that night? Didn't they flee? Didn't they run away? I do not want to say it, but BNP will have a more tragic end. Sheikh Hasina does not bow down and fears no one except Allah."

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It is unfortunate for a nation that it could not devise an election strategy that would ensure a safe and peaceful transfer of power and ensure people's voting rights after five decades of independence. It's a matter of shame for us, and our politicians are to blame for this. Many people asked me who won in the October 28 rally. In reply, I said no matter who won, it's the people who lost.

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

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

Follow The Daily Star Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions, commentaries and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see our guidelines for submission.

In 1978, a book edited by Guy Hermet, Richard Rose and Alain Rouquie was published with an interesting title, Elections without Choice. The book drew some attention soon after its publication, but little did we know that, decades later, the notion of "elections without choice" would become so relevant to the world in general but more so for Bangladesh. 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 edited volume of Elections without Choice was an outcome of a research project initiated by the Committee on Political Sociology, composed of the International Political Science Association and the International Sociological Association. The editors quite rightly noted that political scientists deliberately avoid discussing non-competitive elections, because those elections do not meet the fundamental criterion of a liberal democracy. Not only did they underscore the need for understanding non-competitive elections, but also insisted that such elections are important in tracing the trajectory of each country.

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The book was published at a time when the world was witnessing a gradual shift towards democracy, one country at a time. The Carnation Revolution in 1974 in Portugal and the death of Francisco Franco in 1975 in Spain started a wave, identified as the "Third Wave of Democracy" by Samuel Huntington in 1991. In the early days of democratisation, promoted by Western countries, it was assumed that an election was a key indicator of the political liberalisation process.

In the 1990s, with the demise of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, democracy proliferated globally. It was believed that democratic regimes would be the norm and there could be only a few holdouts of autocratic regimes. But within less than a decade, two features became evident. The first one was that elections by themselves do not demonstrate democratisation, because authoritarian regimes also hold elections that are manipulated. The second feature was the emergence of a new kind of regime, with some apparent democratic traits but which are essentially autocratic; they were called hybrid regimes.

The 2014 election was boycotted by the opposition, yet strategies such as packing the Election Commission, or harassing the opposition, or changing electoral rules were used by the incumbent. In the 2018 election, another tool was added—keeping opposition candidates off the ballot—and this was done both by confining leaders and cancelling their nominations on flimsy grounds, making the candidates spend time at the courthouse, which has not been helpful to the candidates.

Subsequently, these regimes, which often hold elections and win at ease, were described as "electoral authoritarianism." These regimes tend to hold regular elections, but these elections are engineered in a fashion that opposition parties have little to no chance to win. In both closed autocracy and hybrid regimes, these exercises are essentially "elections without choice." Consequently, the attention of political scientists and observers shifted to the "quality" of elections.

Evidence mounted in the 2000s that autocrats and rulers of the hybrid regimes manipulate elections. Election manipulation was not a new phenomenon. However, from the 1970s through the 1990s, manipulation of elections was easily detectable: there was blatant rigging, which included capturing polling booths on election day and weapon-wielding party loyalists scaring voters away from polling stations and stuffing the ballot boxes.

But as these hybrid regimes emerged and the despots needed to have some semblance of legitimacy to continue their rule, rigging of an election took a different route. This is the period of regression of democracy, often described as "democratic backsliding," which political scientist Nancy Bermeo defined as "the state-led debilitation or elimination of any of the political institutions that sustain an existing democracy." These political institutions, Bermeo reminded us in an essay, include "all the institutions that enable people to formulate and signify preferences and then have them weighed by their elected representatives."

Two years after Bermeo's essay was published, a seminal book by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt published in 2018, titled How Democracies Die, unequivocally stated that sometimes democracy dies with a bang, with coups, quickly and forcefully. But lately it happens slowly, incrementally; "democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot box." The would-be autocrats rise through the elections, and then they change the rules of the game. Levitsky and Ziblatt use the analogy of a football game. "To consolidate power, the would-be authoritarians must capture the referees, sideline at least some of the other side's star players, and rewrite the rules of the game to lock in their advantage, in effect tilting the playing field against their opponent." When they talk of a referee, in the political context, who are they referring to? "These include the judicial system, law enforcement bodies, and intelligence, tax and regulatory agencies," they write.

Election, in a tilted field, is already rigged in such a manner that it can deliver only one result—a victory for the incumbent. The manipulation of elections, Bermeo told us, is one of the three key features of democratic backsliding. But such manipulation is not like how the classical autocrats used to do it—blatantly. Instead, these are "strategic manipulation," which includes "a range of actions aimed at tilting the electoral playing field in favor of incumbents." Bermeo provides a list of these actions: "keeping opposition candidates off the ballot," "packing electoral commissions," "changing electoral rules to favor incumbents," and "harassing opponents." Usually, these are done "in such a way that the elections themselves do not appear fraudulent" and are intended to fool election observers and the international community.

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As for these practices, perhaps nobody else has identified them better than Nic Cheeseman and Brian Klaas. Their book, published in 2018, is titled How to Rig an Election. The name sounds like a manual. In some measures, it is so. Only that they have dissected the manual or the playbook of the autocrats drawing on elections around the world. Cheeseman and Klaas identified the leaders who go for rigging: "Leaders are most likely to try and stay in power when they believe that their presence is essential to maintain political stability; in cases when they are less committed to plural politics; when they have engaged in high-level corruption and/or human rights abuses; when they lack trust in rival leaders and political institutions; when they have been in power for a longer period of time; and when they control geostrategically important states with natural resources, effective security forces, weak institutions and high levels of distrust."

They looked at six strategies that autocrats use to manipulate elections: gerrymandering (shaping electoral constituencies to the incumbent's benefit), vote buying, repression of opposition, hacking the election, stuffing the ballot box, and playing the international community. Interestingly, while ballot box stuffing is the most effective strategy, considering the risk of exposure, often autocrats use other strategies ahead of the election to ensure a victory. This is how elections are held by autocratic regimes.

Since the 2014 election, none of these strategies have been in short supply in Bangladesh. That election was boycotted by the opposition, yet strategies such as packing the Election Commission, or harassing the opposition, or changing electoral rules were used by the incumbent. In the 2018 election, another tool was added—keeping opposition candidates off the ballot—and this was done both by confining leaders and cancelling their nominations on flimsy grounds, making the candidates spend time at the courthouse, which has not been helpful to the candidates.

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These have delivered victory, not only a hollow one but something more than that, if we borrow from Cheeseman and Klass: "so one sided as to beggar belief, exposing the ruling party to ridicule." The ruling Awami League has not, by any means, abandoned its 2014 and 2018 strategies, but instead has become further audacious. The violent crackdown on opposition since October 28, arrests of BNP leaders, convictions of BNP leaders and activists at lightning speed, and shutting down party offices are testimonies to the continuation of these strategies. They also show how referees have been captured.

But in search of a way to avoid the ridiculous situations of winning 153 seats unopposed in 2014 or winning 96 percent of seats with allies in 2018, and additionally to "play the international community," it has invented a new way called fielding "dummy candidates." The so-called 'dummies" are candidates who belong to the ruling party but are contesting the election as "independents" with the approval of the party. Besides, the smaller parties, "king's parties," and individuals who have been cajoled or coerced into participating in the election, thanks to state apparatuses, would like to run under the symbol of the ruling AL.

Ironically, these have not saved the party from being a subject of ridicule, but made it more embarrassing for it long before a single vote has been cast. Importantly, all these have laid bare that the ruling AL is moving towards an "election without choice."

Ali Riaz is distinguished professor of political science at Illinois State University in the US, non-resident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, and president of the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies (AIBS). His forthcoming book is titled 'Pathways of Autocratization: The tumultuous journey of Bangladeshi politics.'

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

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So far, we have written a lot about the general election and how the ruling party and the present government have miserably failed (in fact, they never really tried) to create an appropriate atmosphere for a free and fair election. We have also written highly critical pieces regarding the way in which they have treated the main opposition, BNP, with hundreds sentenced, thousands arrested, and many thousands more on the run to stay out of the police's clutches. Our legal system stands weaponised to punish the dissenters, with the police having been given full immunity to misuse their powers to punish, harass and intimidate political opponents, terrorising them beyond belief.

But what about the other side? Did BNP play its part in living up to the wishes of its workers, leave alone the wishes of the people who are dissatisfied with the government and disillusioned with the Awami League? Was BNP's decision to boycott the election taken in any consultative manner, or was it simply imposed on the party workers?

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Given the tradition of anti-incumbency among our voters, the unending stories of misuse of power, corruption, and the nepotism in AL, it is not unreasonable to think that people may have wanted a change. Did BNP build on that? Our own reporters' briefings, the studies that remain unpublished for fear of reprisal, and the rumoured intelligence reports all suggest that support for the opposition was considerable, if not overwhelming. What did BNP do with that support?

Immediately after the 2018 election, BNP declared that it would not participate in any future election under the AL regime, and demanded a caretaker government. Its division-level mobilisation late last year resulted in massive rallies despite severe obstacles, such as transport strikes and various impediments imposed by the government. It gave the BNP and its sympathisers the impression that the party's campaign was bearing fruit.

This election boycott would be the BNP's second one. There are no instances in our region—perhaps none in other democracies either—of a political party surviving after boycotting two elections over a span of one decade. Could this situation present an existential problem for the BNP?

However, perhaps missing in its calculation was how overwhelming the governmental response would be, and when it came, how BNP would tackle it. Alarmed by the public support for BNP, the ruling party unleashed all sorts of undemocratic and extralegal measures to curb the opposition. The actions post-October 28—most oppressive, by any standard—severely affected the BNP's capacity to continue its programmes. The arrest of the party's secretary general, followed by arrests of many top BNP leaders (and with the rest being kept on the run), literally incapacitated this massive party.

To put it simply: BNP launched a movement to oust AL from power—demanding a caretaker government amounts to that—without adequate preparation, and this is now becoming more and more evident. The BNP failed to reap anything effective from the huge public support that it was able to garner late last year.

BNP also made the fatal mistake of not having a Plan B. Demanding Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's removal from power was bound to trigger retaliation. There seems to have been no clear thinking on how to survive that. If the purpose was to loosen the incumbents' hold on the election mechanism, there could have been proposals for power-sharing during elections, or select portfolios being given to the opposition or neutral people under some constitutional arrangement agreed to by both sides. Since the role of police is the key during elections, there could have been special proposals for reducing the ruling party's hold on them. Alternative views would have shown voters that BNP was flexible and open to negotiations. Shutting down all prospects of this was another vital mistake on the BNP's part. This is where the "external pressure" that the BNP was counting on felt completely let down. In all the talks that the BNP had with ambassadors, none supported the idea of an election under a caretaker government, while all insisted on the need for a free and fair election, for Bangladesh's own democratic future. BNP did not absorb this message.

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It can be argued that AL never really wanted BNP in the poll contest in the first place, and that BNP never realised that its boycott was actually serving the AL's goal of keeping it out of the political process as a whole.

It appears that the biggest opposition party never really conducted any in-depth analysis as to whether a boycott would really serve its long-term interests. One wonders what lessons the BNP learnt from its boycott of the 2014 election, if any. Among many other issues, it can be argued that, had the BNP not boycotted the 2014 election, Khaleda Zia would not have lost her position as the leader of the opposition and perhaps would not have faced persecution and incarceration. Even if that had happened, Begum Khaleda Zia would have been far better placed to fight those cases as the leader of the opposition than as just a political leader. Her eclipse from having an active role in leading the party has had a devastating impact on the BNP. Could this have happened if the party hadn't boycotted the election in 2014? Did it take any of this into account?

This election boycott would be the BNP's second one. There are no instances in our region—perhaps none in other democracies either—of a political party surviving after boycotting two elections over a span of one decade. Could this situation present an existential problem for the BNP?

BNP's approach appears to be that, unless assured of victory, the party deems it of no use to participate in the election—a fatal mistake, in our view. The advantage of being a powerful opposition never seems to have appealed to BNP. It did not consider that the parliament would provide a powerful forum through which to propagate its own policies and visions for the future, and thereby create an image of it as a viable alternative.

The truth is, however sad and damaging it may have been for the growth of parliamentary democracy in Bangladesh, neither of our two big parties ever took the role of being the opposition seriously. Both AL and BNP always wanted power, and never the role of a responsible critic to keep the government in check.

As said earlier, anti-incumbency, a government's failures, widespread corruption, and arrogance have all contributed to a feeling for a need for change, which the BNP failed to build on. It might not have gotten the majority votes to form the next government, but it definitely could have formed a powerful opposition, giving it an effective stage to strive for power in 2029. But such a strategy does not appear to have interested BNP at all. It was an "all or nothing" gambit that led BNP to opt for boycotting the election, for which the country and democracy will have to pay a high price.

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If BNP had decided to participate in the election, there would have been 300 BNP (or, in partnership with others) nominees in every nook and corner of the country campaigning for themselves and exposing AL's corruption, power abuse, and misdeeds. The campaign itself would have held the ruling party to some account and significantly strengthened BNP's hold on the public mind. If nothing else, BNP's campaign itself would have had some sobering effect on the ruling party. Its participation would have encouraged foreign observers to take notice, which definitely would have helped to make our election better.

Today, BNP supporters are nothing more than mere onlookers as village after village prepares for the polls, now buoyed by the participation of AL's "rebel" candidates.

Today, all BNP can do is call hartals that nobody follows, enforce blockades which are nowhere to be seen, and declare mass protests that are practically non-existent. All that the opposition on the streets are able to do is create disruptions, which further raise questions about its success.

What a pitiable state to be in for our second-largest political party.

Mahfuz Anam is the editor and publisher of The Daily Star.

Follow The Daily Star Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions, commentaries and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see our guidelines for submission.