Dhaka, Dec. 27 -- The biting winter weather in which Bangladesh looks set to bid farewell to 2019 is not dissimilar to the way the year started. Then too, a cold wave had set in to greet the New Year, and for the 11th straight year, it saw the Awami League holding the reins of political power. This was not the same as all the other years though - except perhaps the very first one, that too only in that an election had just been held (on December 30, 2018), and the result had been a crushing majority for the AL's 14-party coalition over its great rival the BNP and its 20-party coalition, that this time around was supplemented by a secondary alliance led by Dr Kamal Hossain's Gono Forum.

The result handing the AL and its allies 292 seats o...