New Delhi, Feb. 10 -- In the tea stalls of Bangladesh, where politics is consumed with the same sugary intensity as the cha, the mood is one of jittery anticipation. For 18 months the country has been a state in parenthesis. On 12 February that parenthesis would close. Voters will go to the polls in a unique double act: casting one ballot for a new parliament and another in a referendum on the "July Charter," a package of constitutional reforms designed to prevent the rise of another autocrat.

The election is framed as the culmination of a "Second Liberation," born of the student-led uprising that ousted the Awami League in August 2024 after 15 consecutive years in power. Observers from the Commonwealth, the EU and other nations are in ...