Dhaka, Feb. 6 -- What is happening?

Up to 127 million Bangladeshis will go to the polls on 12 February, in the first national elections since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government fell in August 2024. For tens of millions of them, it will be the first chance in their lives to participate in a credible vote. During her fifteen years in power, Hasina oversaw three flawed polls: the opposition boycotted two of them, in 2014 and 2024, and the third, in 2018, was widely seen as rigged. Public discontent with Hasina's misrule laid the foundations for her ouster by a student-led popular uprising.

The elections mark the final step in the delicate political transition that has been under way for a year and a half. The trigger for the movemen...