Dissecting Mr. Tarique Rahman’s Interview with BBC Bangla

Bobby Hajjaj, photo collected.

By Bobby Hajjaj

We are gathered to analyze not merely an interview but a moment of political self-definition. Mr. Tarique Rahman’s conversation with BBC Bangla functions as a compact: an explanation of silence, a claim to inclusive authorship of a popular upheaval, a programmatic view of elections, nominations, justice, policing, economic renewal, foreign relations, and reform. In a country repeatedly refashioned by coups, caretakerships, and charismatic overreach, the test is whether rhetoric will be married to institutional seriousness.

“Why now?”—On silence enforced by law

Mr. Rahman begins by explaining why this is his first extended interview in years: a judicially enforced ban on broadcasting his statements in Bangladesh. This is not apocrypha. In January 2015, the High Court issued an interim order restraining publication/broadcast of his statements while he was treated as a fugitive; in August 2024, coverage noted the context and the earlier prohibition; subsequent reporting has described the order and later moves to lift constraints.

Comparative history offers analogues. Apartheid-era South Africa’s security statutes (from the Suppression of Communism Act through the Internal Security Act) enabled “banning” of persons and prohibition on quoting them; journalists navigated a minefield where even reporting on rallies could be construed as advancing banned causes.

Closer to our time and region, the UK’s 1988–1994 broadcast voice ban on Sinn Féin and allied groups illustrates how liberal polities sometimes adopt constrained speech regimes under security justifications—broadcasters resorted to actors dubbing voices to inform while complying with law.

On “masterminds” and the politics of credit

Asked who masterminded the July uprising, Mr. Rahman declines the cult of authorship and attributes agency to the people. That rhetorical choice draws on a venerable repertoire of postrevolutionary magnanimity: Lincoln’s “with malice toward none,” Mandela’s reconciliation line

after 1994, Washington’s refusal of monarchical adoration. In political thought, representation is not merely mandate aggregation; it is a moral style—what Pitkin called “acting for” (not merely “standing for”)—and magnanimity is a public signal that the sovereign is the citizenry. (Pitkin, 1967; Manin, 1997). Mandela’s first address and subsequent Truth and Reconciliation framing are the modern benchmark for placing victory under the discipline of generosity (see also Sikkink, 2011).

February elections—why timing disciplines politics

Mr. Rahman’s insistence on February elections casts elections as a remedy for the governance problem, not a reward after order is restored. Comparative transitions warn that when revolutionary moments drift without electoral ratification, polarization metastasizes: Egypt’ post-2011 contestations culminating in 2013, Libya’s fissiparous post-conflict institutional vacuum. In Huntington’s (1968) grammar, political order requires institutionalization faster than mobilization; in Przeworski et al. (2000), elections are the crucible in which losers consent.

Recent Bangladesh reporting places a “July Charter” of reforms on an electoral path toward February—an equilibrium between urgency and process.

Nominations beyond party men—representation as service

Mr. Rahman’s notion that nominations should go to those embedded in communities reframes an MP as a servant of constituents rather than of a party secretariat. This resonates with Pitkin’s (1967) “substantive representation,” Manin’s (1997) critique of party cartels, and Dahl’s (1971) polyarchic criteria emphasizing responsiveness. The point is not anti-party but anti-clientelist: mandate flows upward from the electorate, not downward from a party whip.

On Awami League, Jamaat-e-Islami, and accountability across eras

“Those who committed crimes must answer—be that in 1971 or 2023.” Transitional justice literature marks two durable lessons. First, Nuremberg articulated the principle that individuals bear responsibility for grave crimes, regardless of office. Second, durable settlements require credible procedures rather than victor’s justice. UN-formulated Nuremberg Principles and their subsequent codification contextualize Mr. Rahman’s line that atrocity is not immunized by partisan color or by time’s passage (Teitel, 2000; Sikkink, 2011).

On extortion allegations and the 7,000+ disciplinary actions

He cites more than 7,000 disciplinary actions against BNP members—expulsions and demotions for extortion or misconduct—and argues that policing is the state’s function, not a party’s.

Multiple outlets have reported this figure as his publicly stated claim; the whole repertoire of Bangladesh’s print and electronic media attribute it to his formal statements/posts.

Normatively, Mr. Rahman’s separation of roles is orthodox: in democratic theory and practice, law-enforcement belongs to the state under rule-of-law constraints; parties are associative bodies that must enforce internal discipline but cannot arrogate police powers. Bayley’s work on “democratic policing” and OSCE guidance make this division explicit; to make a party responsible for policing is to collapse party and state—and to invite partiality.

On Khaleda Zia’s sacrifices—comparing the grammar of endurance

Mr. Rahman invokes Khaleda Zia’s sacrifices and public service. The relevant comparative frame is not hagiography but the politics of endurance: how personal cost is translated into legitimacy claims (Mandela’s Robben Island years are the canonical referent). Leadership studies note that narratives of sacrifice help constitute “moral capital,” but such capital must be invested in institutions rather than in charismatic exception (George, 2003; Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018).

On “nepotism” and the vocation of politic

He recasts dynastic suspicion as vocation: a life oriented to public purpose, including exile and trauma (the death of a sibling, family costs). Max Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation” is the classic treatise: the ethic of responsibility over the ethic of conviction; the hard work of “slow boring of hard boards.” Vocation alone does not dispel the hazard of dynastic selection, but it reframes the critique—do institutions filter leaders by competence and accountability, regardless of lineage? (Weber, 1919/2004).

Technology, socialization, and the withering of patronage

Mr. Rahman suggests that in the internet age the old patronage networks lose hegemony as political socialization migrates from madrasa–mohalla–muscle to feeds, forums, and peer networks. The comparative evidence is accumulating: social media can destabilize clientelism by lowering coordination costs (Tufekci, 2017; Margetts et al., 2015) and by making monitoring of politicians easier; meanwhile, the literature on vote-buying and brokerage (Stokes et al., 2013) shows how transparency and information flows reduce brokers’ leverage. If politics exists “to improve people’s lot,” as he says in essence, then digital publics haul politics back to outcomes.

“Corruption champion in 2001”—assigning responsibility through time When Bangladesh ranked worst on the 2001 TI CPI, the BNP had just come to office; Mr. Rahman argues that the ranking reflected prior governance. The empirics: Bangladesh was at or near the bottom for several years in the early 2000s. CPI is a perception index with temporal lag; responsibility cannot be read off a single year’s rank without sequencing reforms and scandals. This is less an exoneration than a plea for temporal literacy in accountability.

On DUCSU: conceding defeat, saluting winners

Mr. Rahman’s kudos to DUCSU winners model the decency of conceding. The 2019 DUCSU results, where the ruling party’s student wing predominated amid controversy, remain part of Bangladesh’s institutional memory. Leaders who congratulate adversaries rehearse the democratic ritual of losing with grace; leadership psychology finds empathy a predictor of prosocial decision-making (Goleman, 1998).

On the interim government’s delay and the insistence on February

He calls delay “disappointing” but argues that holding to February reduced suspicion. This is textbook signaling under uncertainty: credible commitment is performed through deadlines met, not merely promises spoken. Contemporary reporting on the July/“National Charter” sequence and a February election horizon underscores how calendars become constitutional.

1/11 and the problem of special-interest tutelage

Bangladesh’s 1/11 (January 2007) caretaker government is widely analyzed as a military-backed, extra-constitutional intervention that froze normal politics in the name of cleansing it.

Scholarship documents the role of security services and external actors in that hiatus. Special interest technocracy, even when salubriously intentioned, distorts democratic selection and accountability.

Garments and manpower export: beginnings that rewired the economy Mr. Rahman points to RMG and overseas employment as policies nurtured under BNP rule.

Historically, export-oriented garments were seeded around 1978–79 (Desh–Daewoo), growing through the 1980s; overseas employment began officially in 1976 and became a remittance backbone. Any single party’s monopoly of credit is untenable; what matters is who extended scale and institutions.

1974 famine and Zia’s drive to self-sufficiency

The 1974 famine’s devastation is not contested; the scholarly debate—led by Amartya Sen’s entitlement approach—locates the calamity in price spikes, market failures, and distribution, not merely in food availability. Post-famine policy consensus on production, procurement, and rural investment under successive governments (starting in President Zia’s era and led by his initiative) sought what Mr. Rahman calls “self-sufficiency.” The moral is not partisan: it is that states learn, sometimes painfully.

Sovereignty, India, and the unresolveds—water and borders

Mr. Rahman’s insistence on safeguarding sovereignty “at border or water” gestures at two chronic dossiers. First, Teesta: a draft sharing formula in 2011 stalled amid state-center politics in India; no treaty has been concluded despite periodic restarts. Second, border violence: HRW and others have chronicled BSF abuses and killings over the years. Advocacy of firm but lawful diplomacy is consistent with human-rights-centered foreign policy. His dogged insistence on safeguarding sovereignty is paramount in ensuring the basic security of a nation-state.

On the BNP’s 31-point reforms and plural disagreement

Mr. Rahman argues BNP tabled its 31-point reforms early, and that disagreement with particular groups (e.g., Jamaat or NCP) does not negate reformism. Primary party documents and reporting confirm the existence and publicization of the 31-point framework; contemporary coverage of the “July Charter” shows a competitive field of reform proposals. Democratic discourse is not the unanimity of ends but the contestation of means.

The Nepal analogy—elections as the only solvent

Mr. Rahman cites Nepal to argue that only elections, not technocratic idylls, legitimate a refounded order. Nepal’s post-2025 civic revolution move to assure immediate polls—imperfect but path-creating—are instructive: legitimacy moved from street to chamber; republicanism waits to be voted into being. The literature and observation missions record both inclusions achieved and instabilities to follow; still, the vote functioned as regime refoundation.

If chosen, to implement the July Charter and the 31 point

Here the interview shifts from diagnosis to promise: to enact previously negotiated reforms. The political-science name for this is “tying hands” ex ante; it raises the cost of reneging. That promise will need translation into justiciable statutes and measurable targets—a point to which I return in closing. (Przeworski et al., 2000; North, 1990).

“Only BNP has governing experience”—on capacity and statecraft

The claim is partisan; the analytic proposition is general: governing experience matters when steering crises. Comparative cases—from inexperienced parties inheriting fiscal or security shocks, to seasoned parties working with a deep bureaucracy—show capacity effects on outcome variance (Huntington, 1968; Fukuyama, 2013). The interview thus ends where institutions begin.

The interview is notable less for its polemics than for its institutional instincts: elections timetabled; nominations reframed as service; justice de-partisanized; party discipline formalized;

economic renewal moored to tested engines; sovereignty asserted within law; reform charters tied to the ballot. The Naipaulian sting in the tail is that history in Bangladesh has often been betrayed by its own deliverers. The test for Mr. Rahman—and for any who would govern—will be whether this grammar becomes code: laws passed, budgets aligned, regulators autonomous, and a police under law. In such a republic, magnanimity is not merely a posture—it is the daily habit of power.