5 min readAug 6, 2026 06:26 PM IST First published on: Aug 6, 2026 at 06:26 PM ISTThe event of Sheikh Hasina’s first press conference in her latest exile — the third such exile in her tumultuous life — was the event itself. That it was able to compete for the headlines with the second anniversary of the July Uprising is itself a sign of success. The reaction in Bangladesh was predictable. The present Bangladesh government was “outraged” by the event. The press conference too was predictable. Hasina used the occasion to reiterate that her return is about “returning to her people,” not about power: “It is about putting Bangladesh back on the right track.”Bangladesh may have many socioeconomic things going for it and against it at any point, but it is perennially on the wrong track in one area — its treatment of the politically defeated side. The parochial nature of the Bangladesh polity manifests in its multipartisan resolve to remain in the mode of killing the defeated side, be it judicially, extrajudicially, or in the grey areas between both. Unsurprisingly, Hasina spent a good amount of time discussing the post-uprising violence that has targeted her party, its sympathisers, and minorities, among others.AdvertisementAlso Read | Sheikh Hasina writes: My absence is not silence. Even though I am away, I am with the people of BangladeshA political revolution is to be judged by the way it transforms the country’s elites. Somehow, none of the many political revolutions in Bangladesh could break this antagonistic political model and introduce what the American political theorist William E Connolly would call an agonistic model of democratic competition based on mutual respect. Instead, Bangladesh has been caught in a long, low-intensity civil war, where it looks as if the antagonism may simply have to exhaust itself with the least possible collateral damage, even as it shows no sign of exhaustion.Being on the receiving end of this antagonism occupied a large part of Hasina’s speech. Otherwise, she did not say anything supremely novel or surprising in her press conference. In fact, her statements over the past two years have not even helped sympathetic journalists extract some striking headlines or make good stories. Hasina appears to be content to keep repeating the same narrative about the July uprising being a conspiracy, even using the same words and phrases over and over. But neither Hasina’s apparent lack of creativity nor the slow choke of repression against Awami League leaders has killed her party.On the contrary, the party has reasons to be optimistic, even in the recent attack on cricketer Shakib Al-Hasan’s home, apparently because he also attended the press conference. Compared to the verve of the early attacks, this response seems tepid, and might point to the flinching of the League’s non-statist opponents. Coupled with this, the League is basically one political crisis away from returning to contention, having retained its most loyal supporters and involuntarily purged itself of opportunists — those who stick by it in these hard times are surely true believers in the idea of the party and its vision of Bangladesh.AdvertisementThe Awami League has been helped by the inability of its opponents to find their feet. The Jamaat-e-Islami got caught between a new age, inclusive Islamism and their traditional, patriarchal model of religious supremacy, the student-led National Citizens’ Party did not do themselves any favours by aligning with Jamaat, and by breaking out into factional fights; and the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party, despite high expectations and promises, largely continues to function as if there was no uprising, in the mode of “old politics”.you may likeThere is probably no good time for Hasina to return to Bangladesh, but the press conference was both a tester and teaser. She announced that she intends to return in December, and must have planned to give a teaser to her party, and a tester to her adversaries’ resolve. In spite of the Bangladeshi establishment’s vociferous calls for the return of Hasina and the carrying out of the death sentence against her, it is not at all clear whether the polity can absorb her comeback, and whether it can manage the fallout from it. Hasina appears to be willing to jump into this political abyss and churn it — the momentary quailing of her adversaries may be enough to give her enough momentum to survive and rebuild from within her own country.Mathew teaches politics and international relations at the School of Liberal Arts and Management Studies, P P Savani University, Surat. Arjun Ramachandran is a research scholar at the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad