Dhaka, Feb. 14 -- The voters did not drift into this election -- they arrived with memory. Memory of repression and upheaval; of movements that promised salvation and delivered uncertainty. In that reckoning, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party emerged not as a symbol of renewal, but as a shield -- against chaos, against experimentation, against what many feared could become a new form of religious authoritarianism.

The verdict was decisive. After nearly two decades in the wilderness, the BNP secured an absolute parliamentary majority and positioned itself to form the next government.

Yet the scale of the victory raised an immediate question: was such a landslide inevitable?

The election -- held without the Awami League -- was widely fram...