Things won’t get any easier for Bangladesh after elections: Kugelman

South Asia affairs expert Michael Kugelman has said that Bangladesh’s next government will face not only domestic policy challenges but also increasing external concerns.

He mentioned tense ties with India, uncertain relations with the new Trump administration in the United States and a border with Myanmar now controlled by the rebel Arakan Army as external worries.

"Things won’t get any easier for Dhaka after elections, whenever they are held," said Kugelman who writes Foreign Policy’s South Asia Brief.

He spent last week in Dhaka, where the legacy of Sheikh Hasina’s father, former President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, once had loomed larger than life.

"The independence leader was depicted in statues and murals, and his name was routinely invoked in public speeches. Today, he is nowhere to be found, but the city is filled with commemorations of the Gen Z revolution," Kugelman wrote.

Sharing his main takeaway from his trip, Kugelman said the Bangladeshi public is growing impatient with an interim government that has made ambitious promises—to restore democracy, rebuild institutions and reform governance—yet has underperformed so far.

Public safety has improved, with little of the deadly retributive violence that was unleashed against Hasina supporters in the days following her ouster, he observed.

But many police officers are still refusing to report to duty and activists buoyed by last year’s movement are regularly mobilising in the streets for various causes, Kugelman said.

Many Bangladeshis, including business leaders, still worry about law and order, he said.

Meanwhile, Kugelman said, Bangladesh’s economy is floundering, continuing a decline that began in the last years of Hasina’s rule.

Besides, he said, the public has limited information about the interim government’s reforms process. "Though commissions were formed to focus on subjects including banking and the country’s constitution, it’s unclear what goals they have set."

Still, Kugelman said, the lack of a formal public mandate will undermine the interim government.

Most Bangladeshis welcomed the new administration last August, but it is not an elected government, he said, adding that the longer it stays in power, the more pressure it will face to call elections.