We congratulate Sheikh Hasina for winning her fifth term as the prime minister, and fourth consecutively—the longest ever in our history. Today, in Bangladesh, everything is centred around her, which is both a testimony to her ability and how institutions are run. From policies to plans to projects and their implementation, from the macro to the micro, from the bigger picture to the minute details, from tinkering with flyover planning to green chilli preservation—everything has to have her direct consent if they are not to fall into the bureaucratic maze. All the megaprojects and their timely execution can be credited to her. There is a story that a fire brigade team leader, while dousing fire in a high-rise in Dhaka, was reportedly captured on TV referring to the PM's direct guidance through which he and his team were able to bring the fire under control. If it is true, then it is an example of her inexhaustible energy, incredible extent of her interest and total dominance in everything.

According to her supporters, it is deservingly so because no one else before her brought about as much positive change in Bangladesh as she did, a claim not without foundation.

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‘It is obvious that there will be no effective parliamentary opposition’

The latest election is another example of her complete control of the most important event in any democracy, made easier by the opposition's boycott, which allowed Hasina a total free hand. There was practically very little interference on election day, as everything was worked out much earlier. BNP proved completely incapable of understanding Sheikh Hasina's strategic thinking and meticulous planning and thought very little of the heavy price they would have to pay, both in the short and in the long run, for their boycott. Hasina's playing of the nationalistic card was bold and brilliant, and her handling of the big powers quite dextrous. Bringing China and India on the same page in supporting her is something many regional and world leaders can learn from.

In terms of Sheikh Hasina's control over everything, the poll outcome tells the story as nothing else could. The Awami League (AL) won 222 seats, while 62 seats were won by the "rebels," 58 of whom were lifelong Awami-Leaguers and were approved by the party. Jatiya Party won 11 seats with AL's blessings. Another two seats won by 14-party alliance members were the result of AL handouts to the extent that they had to use "boat" as their election symbol. So, out of 298 seats whose results have been declared, 293 have been won either by the AL itself or by those it "approved" or "blessed." If we add the 50 reserved seats for women, by far the majority of which will go to the AL, Hasina can easily claim a tally of minimum 45 more, making for a total of 338 MPs in a House of 350. Can it then be termed as anything other than a one-party rule? It can be a case of being too successful for one's own good, for such extreme concentration of power has its own built-in vulnerabilities.

Out of 28 political parties that participated in the election, 23 did not win a single seat, with all their candidates losing their "deposits" proving that they had no public support. They were brought into the fray to hike up the number of parties joining the election only to argue that the polls were contested by many parties.

The only party that could have challenged the AL in any meaningful way—the BNP—was so heavily crushed, and over such a long period, that by the time polling time came, it got decimated through police action, endless cases, fast-track conviction and widespread intimidation. As of election day 13,424 BNP leaders and activists were arrested, according to the party. It also claimed that under 499 cases lodged, a total of 52,342 members have been implicated as their names were included in the first information reports (FIRs). The fact that BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakrul Islam Alamgir, a man who commands respect across the political divide, has been in jail since October 29 and denied bail repeatedly—even last Wednesday—says it all.

However, BNP's own policy of boycotting the election, which we consider to have been suicidal, further added to the process of its marginalisation.

The most important outcome of this election is the emergence of Sheikh Hasina as the supreme leader of the country. She has been so for many years now, but the latest election has enormously consolidated that position. What was de facto is now de jure.

Ever since her return from exile in India in 1982, she has been consolidating her power—first within the party and then within the government—through politicisation of the bureaucrats, law enforcement agencies, administration in general and massive distribution of perks and facilities, and finally in the whole country, through total crushing of any opposition and non-partisan dissent, making her its supreme leader.

The outcome of the January 7 election is that there is not a single member of parliament, save two or three, who do not owe his or her membership to her. The parliament, which has for a long time been no more than a rubber stamp of her policies, will now be more so and represent no other party other than the AL and reflect no one else's voice but hers. In the last parliament, BNP at least had seven MPs who did take the government to task whenever given a chance. However, in this one, even that level of discordance will be absent. It will be a chorus all the way.

Absurd as it may sound, so complete is Sheikh Hasina's victory that it will have to be her to determine who the leader of the opposition in parliament will be. So far, the largest group other than AL consists of the so-called "rebels," all of whom want to return to the party. Maybe Sheikh Hasina can persuade them to form the "opposition" and can guide them from behind. Thus, she will be de jure leader of the House and de facto leader of the opposition. An incredible achievement with incalculable danger—the parliament becoming a complete handmaiden and democracy being put on a ventilator with the total oxygen supply in one specific hand.

Self-congratulatory rhetoric aside, there are some hard messages for the winning party from the low voter turnout. AL's vote bank is usually considered to be 35-40 percent. So the total turnout of 41.8 percent (per Election Commission data) shows that only AL supporters turned up for voting, and the neutral voters, assumed to be 20-25 percent, stayed away, as well as the vote bank of BNP which is estimated to be 30-35 percent (from previous elections), making for a total of nearly 60 percent voters who stayed away. So the exuberant claim that people overwhelmingly voted the present government to power needs to be examined more objectively, and its in-built lessons learnt.

Simply put, Sheikh Hasina now stands out as the person solely responsible for whatever happens to the country. The economic turbulence that is predicted because of global economic turmoil will all fall on her doorstep, with all blames coming her way. The dollar price hike, the inflation, rising prices of essentials, money laundering, unbearable energy subsidy and the unrest in the global market dipping our export will all come home to roost in the coming months. Already, the former finance minister has announced that all IMF conditions cannot be met. In the June-December period, we could not maintain our foreign exchange reserves as asked. This may not be the first of other defaults that may follow.

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Politics-business mix coming home to roost

During the last decade and especially the last five years, corruption increased by leaps and bounds; denying it will only amount to burying our heads in the sand. The rising amount of non-performing loans is sucking the very "blood" out of our banking system, and the main business houses responsible for it continue to receive official favour. The banks' internal governance system has been weakened, making the sector more vulnerable and putting the whole economy at risk. The issue of good governance has been ignored alarmingly, with vital institutions abandoning its own rules and accountability. The weaponising of the legal system and its selective use will definitely weaken the confidence of the global business community, which is of vital importance if we want to increase foreign investment. The prime minister assured us that the economy will be her main focus. We urge her to start her new tenure by taking decisive actions on the problems identified above.

The all-encompassing victory may not be as smooth a sailing as it looks on the surface. For the fact is that victories naturally glitter, but absolute victory inevitably blinds.

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

Views expressed in the 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.

Since forever, lessons on legal authority (within jurisprudence) seemed rather futile to me as they stood in dissonance with my lived socio-political reality in Bangladesh. One such instance is the "service conception" of authority I had to learn, meaning simply that legal authority exercises its power over us because it serves us. In fact, authority derives its authority from the service it delivers. It serves us with meaningful options that we would choose from anyway. The lessons made me wonder why we are not conditioned to really conceptualise authority as service. More importantly, why do those in power never see themselves in our service—the governed?

The ground reality of politics in Bangladesh has historically been quite complicated with opposing geopolitical interests at play and various factions awaiting to capitalise on political leverage. Perhaps, in both catering to and exploiting such complexities, the language of authority in Bangladesh has been of compulsion, uncritical submission, and exertion of force. Invariably, binaries have been produced to perpetuate cycles of oppression against the "others."

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A call to end the cycle of revenge politics

The identities of "political others" have changed over time, as the political fields shifted, and schisms widened more and more. Their rise and fall have been marked by suppression, reprisals, and dominance. The "apolitical others" however, remained unchanged over time, across regimes. Such "others" are the fringe-dwellers—the Indigenous and religious minorities, the disabled, the gender-diverse, and invariably, the women. Different academic circles have been critical of how minority voices got subsumed by the majoritarian nation-building politics since independence.

In particular, in negotiating with the "Indigenous question," ethnic nationalism in Bangladesh has proved to be a major failure no matter who got hold of power. Similarly, the marginalisation of "women question" and "religious minority question" within the politico-legal imaginary too has been a disconcerting reality. More curiously, politics in Bangladesh produced a third category of "critical others"—shunned as "others" for not uncritically sympathising with everything the ruling elites stood for. Unappreciative of the nuance, such "others" have by and large been wrongly labelled as "political others."

Standing at a crossroads, it is important for the media and academia to help sustain the liberal fervour of the July uprising for as long as possible, and to become voices for ones who are forcefully silenced and ones who are conventionally (and conveniently) not heard.

Any transition makes for a fertile ground to further marginalise the various categories of "others." Transitions make us aware that power is not concentrated only within those formally at the helm of statecraft in Bangladesh, rather it is decentralised. Power pervades across spheres—from court corridors to the narrow alleys, from schools to universities, from tea-stalls to our walls, it grows and breeds even within our domesticity. As we stand at a crossroads, the government needs to rethink and renegotiate what power and authority should imply for the "others" at any given point—should they serve or dominate or should they harm or protect?

Instead of "serving" us, those in power have exploited their authorities and trod abysmally intolerant paths in the past. However, while redressing the wrongs perpetrated in the past, time is now ripe to also free our politics from the clutches of whataboutism and tropes of circular narratives of dominance and hegemony. This would potentially humanise the liminal space that the "political others" inhabit. Furthermore, it is important to replace and reform the state-centric paternalistic or assimilationist language for defining and treating the "apolitical others" (eg, the minorities). To this end, some begin by seeking reform around the label "minority," while others outrightly denounce the tag. In this context, we ought to ask if getting rid of the epithet of "minority" would mask the obvious fissures and the systemic imbalance of power. Indeed, being "minority" is not numeric, but is about marginalisation within an often-majoritarian power domain. Therefore, to me, the epithet "minority" is but a fact, with no judgment attached— it can mean anything from resistance against assimilation to even pride of belonging.

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Beyond quotas: Education, employment, and the unfinished revolution

Time is now ripe to acknowledge the positionality of "minorities" within the power hierarchy while also being mindful to their agency and subjectivity as different identarian groups. Now is the time to work towards dissecting and understanding the varied voices that make up different identities—both those that are dominant and more so those that are peripheral. There is no singularity or duality to any identity, and we ought to appreciate the plurality (and intersectionality) that defines Bangladesh as a collectivity.

It is certainly not an easy task to break free from our deep-seated social as well as political culture which is as old as the state itself. However, with appropriate language, changes, although minimal, could certainly occur. As we speak of reform, the interim government needs to address the language of power above all—both the language that defines the authority and language that the authority uses to speak to (or define even) the "others."

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What reforms does the media need in Bangladesh?

One of the ways to do so is strengthening the academia and the mass media. I put academia and media together essentially because these two produce language. Indeed, responsible academic and journalistic practices can potentially influence the power behind language and similarly shape the language behind power. The role of these two should never change, rather remain steadfast across regimes—unapologetically critical, unfettered, and powerful. There should also be institutional guarantees and safeguards to ensure that they are not viewed (or worse, hounded) as political or critical "others" for challenging the status quo, critiquing the establishment, or questioning the taken-for-granted assumptions that those in power usually try to feed us. Necessary reforms should therefore be brought to empower academia and media in such a way that can create meaningful democratic (and yet not majoritarian) spaces for reconciliation and responsible statecraft.

Hannah Arendt once said, "The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative on the day after the revolution." Standing at a crossroads, it is important for the media and academia to help sustain the liberal fervour of the July uprising for as long as possible, and to become voices for ones who are forcefully silenced and ones who are conventionally (and conveniently) not heard. We need to be vigilant so that the political transition does not make room for shrinking spaces for dissents or for unjustly quelling those considered as "others" at any given point. Indeed, now is the time to create conditions so we may dare to conceptualise the governed as the "served" and the ruling elites in our service—for as long as the demarcation exists.

Psymhe Wadud teaches law at the University of Dhaka and is in charge of Law & Our Rights, 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.