Bangladesh holds presidential election in first contested vote in 35 years

 Dhaka, Bangladesh – Bangladesh is holding its first contested presidential election in 35 years, with the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) candidate Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir pitted against former army officer Oli Ahmad, the nominee of the Jamaat-e-Islami-led 11-party opposition alliance.

A total of 349 members of parliament are eligible to vote in the parliamentary chamber between 08:00 GMT and 11:00 GMT on Thursday, with the result expected hours later, according to Bangladesh’s Election Commission.

The election was triggered by the resignation last month of Mohammed Shahabuddin, who was elected unopposed in 2023 as a nominee of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League (AL) party. He quit halfway through his five-year term after serving through Hasina’s removal in August 2024, the Muhammad Yunus-led interim administration, and the BNP’s return to power in February.

Thursday’s vote will be the first contested presidential election since October 1991, when BNP candidate Abdur Rahman Biswas defeated AL nominee Badrul Haider Chowdhury by 172 votes to 92. Every presidential election since was uncontested.

The outcome, however, is widely seen as a foregone conclusion.

Of the 349 lawmakers eligible to vote, 247 belong to the BNP and 90 to the Jamaat-led opposition alliance, giving Alamgir a decisive numerical advantage.

Still, the vote carries symbolic significance for a country reshaping its institutions two years after the 2024 uprising that ended Hasina’s iron-fisted 15-year rule.

Who are the candidates?

Alamgir, 78, is one of the BNP’s most prominent leaders. He became the acting secretary-general in 2011 and was formally appointed to the post in 2016, emerging as one of the party’s principal public faces during its long years in opposition under Hasina.

Alamgir’s opponent, retired Colonel Ahmad, 85, is a decorated veteran of Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War, chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and a six-time member of parliament.

Despite Ahmad’s slim chances of winning, the opposition alliance has hailed him as an experienced and broadly acceptable candidate, ensuring that the presidency will be decided through a vote and not remain uncontested.

Historic, but how important?

Bangladesh’s constitution makes the president the head of state, but grants the office little independent executive authority. Article 48(3) requires the president to act on the prime minister’s advice, except in appointing the prime minister and the chief justice.

Ali Riaz, a political scientist who served as co-chair of the National Consensus Commission on state reforms under the Yunus-led interim government, said the return of a contested election was welcome, but its practical significance should not be overstated.

“It’s good to see that someone who has been at the forefront of the democratic movement and fought against a fascist regime will be occupying the office of the president,” Riaz told Al Jazeera.

“However, the presidential election has very little significance due to the limited powers of the president.”

Riaz also questioned the significance of an open vote in which the governing party already has the numbers to win. “The election is more of a ritual than substantive in terms of governance and politics,” he said.

Questions over the process

For the families of more than 1,400 people killed by the security forces during the 2024 uprising, Shahabuddin’s departure and the election of a new president are overdue.

“It should have happened much earlier, but it is still good to see it happening now,” Sanjida Khan Deepti, mother of 17-year-old Shahriar Khan Anas who was killed during the uprising, told Al Jazeera.

But Deepti questioned whether MPs should be bound by their party’s choice.

“If an MP cannot vote for the person they believe is best for the country, then what is the point of holding a vote?” she said. “Our children gave their lives for democracy.”

The election has revived debates over whether Article 70 of the constitution – which can cost lawmakers their parliamentary seats for voting against their party – should apply to a presidential election.

For all its constitutional limitations and predictable arithmetic, Thursday’s vote will mark a rare moment in Bangladesh’s politics: for the first time in more than three decades, lawmakers will have two names on the ballot for the country’s next head of state.