Every election season produces its own cottage industry of speculation. Who will win, who will lose? Who will defect at the last minute. Bangladesh is no exception. What is different this time is not the noise, but the note underneath it—a low, steady hum of disbelief. The question many are now asking, quietly but insistently, is not who will form the next government, but whether there will be a meaningful election at all. And if there is one, whether the country can survive its aftermath without sliding into national chaos.

Anyone can call it cynicism. But history gives it another name: pattern recognition.

On paper, the arrangements look complete. Polling schedules announced. Administrative postings finalized. Security plans drawn up. Analysts on television panels speak as if competition itself has already returned. But elections are not rituals; they are contracts. And this contract requires trust—trust that the referee is neutral, that the rules will not change mid-game, that the count reflects the cast. That trust, today, is conspicuously absent.

The phrase circulating most ominously is “administrative coup.” It sounds dramatic. It is not. An administrative coup does not arrive with tanks on the streets or speeches on state television. It arrives with transfers, directives, quiet instructions, delayed counts, and selective silence. It is bloodless at first, procedural in appearance, devastating in effect.

Bangladesh has seen this movie before. In 2008, results were effectively known before voting concluded. The formalities came later. Many of the technicians of that exercise—advisers, strategists, institutional fixers—are once again visible, occupying influential........

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