Bangladesh’s political future is once again suspended in uncertainty. Since the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s regime following a mass uprising and her hurried flight to India, the country has drifted without a clear centre of gravity.Amid the confusion, one conclusion has gained near-universal acceptance: that only a credible election can restore legitimacy. By most accounts, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) is now best positioned to form the next government. And on Thursday (December 25), its de facto leader, Tarique Rahman, has returned home after years in exile, ushering in what is set to be a decisive and deeply contested chapter in the nation’s politics.Few political figures in Bangladesh have been judged as relentlessly and prematurely as Rahman. Long before he ever held state power, verdicts were passed on his competence, his character and his capacity to lead. This reflex to declare him a failure before he has even been tested has followed him across regimes and eras.During the previous government’s tenure, a steady stream of narratives sought to reduce him to a caricature: inept, unfit, unworthy and even a brat. After the massive uprising and the subsequent political rupture of August 5, 2024, the same judgments persist as though the result of his leadership is already known, despite the fact that he has not yet governed.This is not to deny the shortcomings within his party. The BNP has struggled to contain indiscipline and misconduct among its ranks. Efforts were made to act against those implicated in irregularities and abuses, but not all allegations were resolved, nor could they be.Yet critics’ preferred tactic has been less about accountability and more about substitution. Instead of engaging Rahman directly, they routinely present a criminal suspect – often a former leader or a marginal figure from a distant locality – as the true face of the BNP. The implication is clear: Rahman is irrelevant; the party is defined by its worst, not its leader.This strategy has been refined over years. A section of left-leaning intellectuals helped entrench the image of Rahman as “uncultured” or politically illegitimate, an outsider to serious governance. That framing migrated seamlessly into mainstream media and has since been amplified by right-wing rivals and online provocateurs.Social media, in particular, has become a relentless echo chamber, recycling old allegations and new distortions with little regard for proportion or fairness.What emerges is not a debate over policy or vision, but a sustained exercise in narrative politics – one that substitutes character assassination for democratic scrutiny.Across two distinct political periods, Rahman has faced an information environment overwhelmingly hostile to him. The bias has been so pervasive that it has often obscured a basic democratic principle: leaders should be judged by what they do in power, not by what others predict they will do.A person of restraintIt is under these conditions that Rahman has returned to Bangladesh. His homecoming is already reshaping political equations, both within the BNP and beyond it. Until now, he has led from afar, constrained by exile and circumstance. Now he will enter the arena in person – facing towering expectations and a political system still reeling from upheaval.The stakes could not be higher. The gap between what Bangladesh’s public hopes Rahman will deliver and the formidable obstacles before him will determine not only his political fate, but the country’s as well. If he succeeds, Bangladesh may finally move toward a grounded democratic reset. If he fails, the vacuum of trust and leadership will deepen. Either way, the verdict should be earned, not pre-written.Much of the confusion surrounding Rahman stems from a deeper mismatch between who he is and what Bangladeshi politics has long demanded its leaders be. His temperament, demeanour and personal style run directly against the grain of the country’s dominant political culture – a fact that has made him unusually vulnerable to distortion.On this point, unlikely actors converge. India, the Awami League and even the Jamaat-e-Islami appear to share a preference for portraying him as weak, ineffective and politically insignificant.The reason this framing takes hold is revealing. Bangladesh’s political imagination remains fixated on the figure of the “strongman” – the leader who shouts and performs authority through aggression. Power here is expected to be theatrical, even menacing.Hasina’s carefully cultivated image of ruthlessness was long celebrated by her supporters as proof of competence. Rahman, by contrast, speaks softly. He does not thunder at crowds or posture as a saviour. In a culture conditioned to equate volume with authority, he does not even look like a leader.His personal life further complicates matters. Rahman presents himself plainly, lives without ostentation and avoids the pageantry that often surrounds South Asian politics. In much of Europe, such restraint would signal seriousness. In Bangladesh, it invites suspicion.Leaders are expected to resemble monarchs – distant and glamorous. Also elevated above the ordinary. That expectation, shaped in part by colonial hangovers, still lingers. By appearing unremarkable, Rahman deprives the public of spectacle and his opponents of an easy myth to attack or inflate.The absence of grandeur leaves him exposed. He is not a cult figure, nor does he project ideological absolutism. The BNP reflects that same looseness: it is internally diverse, centrist by instinct, and ill-equipped for the kind of aggressive narrative warfare mastered by its rivals.As a result, attacks on Rahman – especially online – are frequent, personal and often untethered from fact. Even minor critics feel emboldened to confront him directly, sensing no towering persona to fear.Yet this very ordinariness may explain his resilience. In a country emerging from years of tightly controlled narratives, something has shifted. With Hasina’s fall, Bangladesh has entered what might be called a post-narrative phase – one in which grand myths no longer command automatic loyalty. Many political actors have yet to grasp this change. They continue to recycle character assassinations that once worked.But younger voters and an exhausted public increasingly prefer what feels real.Years of oblivionDuring the years when the media largely erased him, Rahman chose a different route. He bypassed elite platforms and invested in the grassroots, speaking more often with village-level workers than with senior leaders. That slow, unglamorous engagement built trust where spectacle could not. His modest lifestyle reinforced the connection. To many supporters, he did not appear distant or superior; he appeared familiar.This has not produced a personality cult. Instead, it has generated something quieter and arguably more durable: a form of legitimacy rooted in recognition rather than awe. Only now, as he returns, are the contours of that support becoming visible.There is no doubt that emotion has always been a decisive force in Bangladeshi politics. Often, it does more than shape public opinion; it determines political survival. Leaders who successfully cast themselves as victims tend to win sympathy, legitimacy and, eventually, power. The previous regime mastered this craft, turning grievance into a governing strategy.Rahman, notably, has refused to play that game.This refusal is striking given his own history. Few political figures in contemporary Bangladesh have endured comparable persecution. The temptation to foreground his suffering – to deploy exile, harassment and loss as political capital – would have been strong, and doing so politically effective. Yet he has consistently declined to do so.In private conversation, he once observed that for nearly two decades, the families of thousands of party leaders and supporters have borne far greater suffering. To elevate his own pain above theirs, or to compete in public grief, would amount to moral fraud. He has treated the commercialisation of personal suffering as indecent – and opted out of it.That restraint has not gone unnoticed. Gradually, it has reshaped how politically conscious citizens perceive him. Rather than seeing a leader driven by personal grievance, many now see someone who measures politics against a broader sense of collective responsibility.In the aftermath of August 5, 2024 – a moment that awakened citizens to their own agency – this distinction matters. The emerging demand is for a leader capable of aligning with a citizen-centric vision of the state. For a growing segment of the electorate, Rahman fits that expectation.Bangladesh’s political culture, however, thrives not only on emotion but on what might be called “political truth” – narratives that are not outright lies but are selectively framed, repeated until they harden into certainty. These half-truths proved far more effective than blatant falsehoods in sustaining authoritarian rule.Against this machinery, Rahman has chosen an unusually difficult course. When allegations surge against him – even when they gain temporary traction – he rarely responds. He does not rush to defend himself or perform innocence. Instead, he allows falsehoods to exhaust themselves while continuing his work.This posture demands patience bordering on self-denial. But history has vindicated it. Many of the claims weaponised against him during the Hasina years collapsed with her fall. Even after August 5, a fresh narrative took hold: that he would never return to Bangladesh, that he would remain abroad even as his mother lay dying, that he would avoid the risk of electoral accountability.These claims circulated widely, amplified by activists and commentators who treated speculation as fact.A return to homelandThey unravelled the moment Rahman announced his return on December 25. With that single decision, months of conjecture dissolved, leaving its authors morally exposed. What he is attempting is rare in Bangladeshi politics: to hold truth and power together without theatrics, grievance or deceit. This approach runs directly against the country’s political instincts, and it may not guarantee success in every contest ahead.But it is already yielding something more durable – trust.Even critics who remain dissatisfied with his choices struggle to accuse him of dishonesty. There is no denying the fact that Bangladesh’s political culture has long been poisoned by manipulation, and that honesty alone marks a meaningful departure. He may fail. He may falter. But he is not a deceiver. And for Bangladesh, that distinction is no small gain.Rahman appears determined to proceed without illusion. Unlike the previous government, which sustained itself through promises it never intended to keep, he has avoided selling fantasies. His message has been deliberately austere: the country cannot be rebuilt through slogans, only through prolonged struggle – and the road ahead will be hard.This candour reflects an understanding shaped by the mass uprising itself, which stripped away old certainties and exposed a harsher political reality.That reality now presents him with his most immediate task: remaking the BNP into an organisation capable of governing under post-authoritarian conditions. The BNP has never been a rigid ideological machine. It is, by design, a value-driven coalition. But that flexibility, once an asset, now demands reinvention.Without a serious restructuring – one that elevates competence and ethical leadership – his national ambitions will remain out of reach. A value-based party cannot succeed on inertia alone.As a party leader, Rahman has already passed a crucial test. Despite years of repression and exile, he kept the BNP intact, preventing fragmentation and guiding it through the turbulence that ultimately culminated in the uprising. That chapter, however, is closed. The challenge before him is larger and more unforgiving: he must now transition from opposition figure to national leader.The obstacles are formidable. He faces ideological adversaries who thrive on absolutism, as well as remnants of an ultra-authoritarian order whose most effective weapon remains narrative manipulation. There are entrenched interests – power syndicates that function as a state within the state – that will resist any attempt at genuine reform.Managing civil-military relations will require tact and restraint. And then there is India. Public sentiment toward New Delhi is volatile, shaped by resentment as much as dependence. A stable future demands a relationship that is neither submissive nor confrontational – a balance that few leaders in Bangladesh have managed to strike.Complicating matters further is the fog of disinformation. Although it is widely known that India has viewed Rahman with suspicion since the seizure of ten truckloads of arms years ago, his opponents routinely circulate fabricated claims portraying him as Delhi’s preferred ally. Navigating this contradiction – scepticism abroad, suspicion at home – will test his political judgment as much as his resolve.Ultimately, Rahman’s survival as a national figure will depend on whether he can rise above partisan identity. To succeed, he must become more than the leader of the BNP; he must embody a broader sense of national purpose. Establishing himself as a unifying figure – a statesman rather than a factional contender – is his defining challenge.The stakes extend far beyond his personal future. Whether he succeeds or fails will shape Bangladesh’s political trajectory for years to come. In a country emerging from deception and exhaustion, the difference between another partisan victor and a credible national leader may prove decisive.Rezaul Karim Rony is a Dhaka-based writer and thinker. He is the editor of Joban magazine.