Dhaka, Bangladesh – It was almost midnight, but tens of thousands of people were still gathering for a campaign rally in Gazipur, a garment manufacturing hub north of Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka.Many had been waiting for hours to hear Tarique Rahman, who succeeded as the chairman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) following the death of his mother and Bangladesh’s first female prime minister, Khaleda Zia, in December.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of listBNP leaders saw the turnout as evidence that their party, long oppressed under 15 years of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government, was able to mobilise supporters and rebuild its strength as it seeks to return to power in the February 12 general election.Hasina’s Awami League party was banned from politics last year by the interim administration of Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, leaving the BNP a frontrunner in Thursday’s vote. Its main rival is Jamaat-e-Islami (also known as Jamaat), a resurgent Islamist party, which has allied with the National Citizen Party (NCP), formed by former student leaders of the 2024 uprising that toppled Hasina.Since returning to Bangladesh on December 25 after nearly 17 years of exile in the United Kingdom, Rahman, 60, has been at the centre of the BNP’s election campaign, which ended on Tuesday. His rallies drew large crowds, with his presence reassuring supporters of the party’s revival after the arrests, internal splits, and its distance from voters during Hasina’s government. Rahman speaks to supporters during an election rally in Dhaka, on February 9, 2026 [Mahmud Hossain Opu/AP]The symbolism of his return – visible, accessible, and leading from the front – carried its own power, tapping into a grassroots base that traces back to his father, General Ziaur Rahman, a fo …
