On September 1, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) marked its 47th anniversary at a moment of renewed relevance. Once the most beleaguered political force in the country, it now stands on the cusp of a possible return to power.

With Sheikh Hasina’s authoritarian, mafia-style grip finally broken, BNP’s long-suffering activists can taste something they have not known in fifteen years: breathing space.

Polls suggest the people expect BNP to form the next government. The question is whether it can rise to the task.

The challenge today is not merely electoral victory. It is whether BNP can lead Bangladesh into the future that includes not only embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution but also navigating the disruption of artificial intelligence.

It also needs to confront the existential threat of environmental collapse. No incoming government can afford to evade these demands.

BNP has done it before. Founded in 1978, it carved out a political identity–Bangladeshi Nationalism–that continues to resonate, especially after July’s uprising reshaped the political order.

It was BNP that restored parliamentary democracy in 1991 through the Twelfth Amendment, a complete break from autocracy. It was BNP that reintroduced multiparty politics after the BAKSAL experiment, pioneered the caretaker government system, and passed reforms that remade the economy and education.

These are not just dusty achievements rather they are the scaffolding of modern Bangladesh.

The list is formidable: the Value-Added Tax that stabilized state revenue, the 1992 Private University Act that cracked open higher education, stipends for girls and food-for-education programs that changed classrooms forever, direct mayoral elections in 1994, and the 2004 SAFTA agreement that held the promise of unlocking South Asian trade.

Even the earliest stirrings of women’s football bear BNP’s fingerprints.

Hovering over all of this is the figure of Ziaur Rahman, the party’s founder. His declaration of independence–an act that sealed his destiny–made him an indelible figure in Bangladesh’s history.

He remains one of the few handful military officers awarded the nation’s highest gallantry honor. Attempts to erase his legacy have failed.

Zia restored democracy, modernized agriculture, reduced import dependency, initiated family planning, laid the foundation of the garment sector, and conceptualized SAARC. His reputation for integrity, despite endless campaigns to tarnish it, remains largely intact.

Between promise and repetition

After Ziaur Rahman’s assassination, Begum Khaleda Zia–once dismissed as a reluctant housewife–emerged as an unlikely unifier.

Her tenure was marked by a steady hand and a focus on education and self-reliance. Under her watch, Bangladesh’s business climate ranked far higher than today, the taka nearly matched the Indian rupee, and the 2004 tax reforms she oversaw created the fiscal space for ambitious development budgets.

Ironically, those achievements later became trophies claimed by her rivals. They remain, however, enduring milestones in the country’s institutional memory.

Today, Khaleda Zia is gravely unwell, and the mantle has passed to her son, Tarique Rahman. His greatest achievement has been survival: keeping BNP intact under the weight of unprecedented repression and the suffocating reign of Sheikh Hasina.

His 31-point plan for reform gestures at a more ambitious agenda–state restructuring, institutional renewal, and political reform. Yet his absence from Bangladesh, the ghost of Hawa Bhaban, and unresolved corruption allegations continue to shadow his leadership.

None of these charges has stood in court, but the whispers persist. For supporters, the question is not abstract: when will he return, and can he lead from exile forever?

No party in Bangladesh is free of blemish, and BNP is no exception. Its alliance with Jamaat, the Magura by-election scandal, and the ill-judged extension of judges’ retirement age in 2008 have cost it dearly.

Internally, the party has long been plagued by factionalism, indiscipline, and multiple candidates cannibalizing each other in the same constituency.

Thousands of expulsions have failed to restore order. Worse, a culture of senior leaders’ reckless remarks now routinely detonates across social media. Arrogance remains a chronic risk: nothing alienates undecided voters faster.

The deeper problem lies in BNP’s organizational decay. Its membership registers are outdated and opaque, allowing opportunists to exploit the party’s name. Party councils, once a mechanism for accountability and renewal, have grown irregular.

Under Zia, intra-party democracy acted as a safety valve against implosion; today, that discipline has all but vanished. If BNP wants to avoid replaying old mistakes, it must embrace transparent membership, merit-based candidate selection, and genuine youth leadership.

Breaking the cycle

The opportunity before BNP is historic. But history is not destiny. If the party cannot reform itself from within, no election victory will save it from repeating the failures of its past.

BNP’s greatest failures were not just in policy, but in principle. Twice–in 1996 and again in 2006–it bungled the peaceful transfer of power.

The second collapse exacted a heavy toll, on the party and on the country. If Tarique Rahman, as a potential future prime minister, can govern for five years and then hand power to a caretaker government before seeking a fresh mandate, it would mark something unprecedented in Bangladesh: a clean, democratic transfer of power.

Such a gesture would not be mere political calculation rather it would be the clearest proof that BNP has absorbed the lessons of history.

That history, however, is littered with warnings. BNP once lent support to ambitious generals like Ershad, Nasim, Moeen who quickly turned into liabilities. With Sheikh Hasina gone, opportunists will once again circle.

The party cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of trusting the wrong men at the wrong time.

BNP’s strength has never been in glossy infrastructure projects but in institutional reform. Even today, it has endorsed nearly all major reform proposals now in circulation. Its task is to transform that record into a forward-looking vision.

That means structural changes in its own organization, transparent candidate nominations, and genuine engagement with ordinary citizens–whether through digital help desks, open communication channels, or issue-based manifestos that cut through empty rhetoric.

Transparency and youth leadership are the foundation of any credible renewal.

Bangladesh’s political future remains tethered to BNP’s trajectory. At 47, the party faces its most demanding test: to prove that it can reform itself and deliver. Words will not suffice.

The people, weary of promises, will judge BNP solely by its actions.

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Subail Bin Alam is an engineer and columnist. Ehteshamul Haque is a U.S. attorney.