Bangladesh's first post-uprising election is a test for democratic norms and minority rights

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladeshis will cast ballots on Thursday in a crucial national election, the first since a mass uprising ended the 15-year rule of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Public expectation is running high that the vote could help reset democratic norms after more than a decade of disputed elections and shrinking political space.

The transition is being overseen by an interim administration led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, which has pledged a fair vote.

Here’s what to know about the polls in Bangladesh.

The election of a new Parliament will involve more than 127 million eligible voters in the nation of some 170 million people, with 1,981 candidates contesting parliamentary seats nationwide. The Yunus-led administration has stated that it is committed to holding elections that are free, fair and peaceful. To help ensure this, around 500 foreign observers will be present, including from the European Union and the Commonwealth, to which Bangladesh belongs.

The vote also introduces a significant procedural change. Bangladeshi citizens living abroad will be able to participate through a postal voting system for the first time. The move is intended to broaden electoral participation by including the country’s large expatriate population.

Bangladesh’s national legislature comprises 350 lawmakers. Of these, 300 are elected directly from single-member constituencies, while an additional 50 seats are reserved for women. Elections are conducted under a first-past-the-post system, and each Parliament serves a five-year term.

The election will also include a referendum for political reforms that include prime ministerial term limits, stronger checks on executive power and other safeguards preventing parliamentary power consolidation.

Whether the process delivers genuine institutional reform or continues to support existing power structures will shape Bangladesh’s domestic stability, which has been marked by periods of military rule and weak democratic structures since its independence from Pakistan in 1971.

“The future of Bangladesh is in the hands of its citizens and elected leaders to ensure the country’s stability as a rights-respecting democracy,” said Catherine Cooper, staff attorney at the Robert & Ethel Kennedy Human Rights Center.

She said it is critical that the newly-elected government “prioritize and protect civic space, allowing civil society, the press, political opposition, and all citizens to speak without fear of repression.”

The election results will also serve as an important test of whether popular protest movements by young people can translate into durable democratic change. Nearly 5 million people are new voters and will be casting their ballots for the first time.

Bangladesh’s political landscape has for decades revolved around two rival dynasties. On one side is the Awami League, headed by Hasina, the daughter of the country’s founding president. Opposing it is the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, now led by Tarique Rahman, son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia . who died in December.

With the Awami League banned, the BNP has emerged as the front-runner, positioning Rahman as the leading candidate.

Rahman returned to Bangladesh in December after 17 years in self exile and has promised to rebuild democratic institutions, restore the rule of law and revive the economy.

Challenging the BNP is a broad 11-party coalition spearheaded by the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami, which is seeking to expand its influence in national politics. Jamaat-e-Islami was banned under Hasina but has gained influence since her ouster.

The alliance also includes the newly formed National Citizen Party, created by leaders of the 2024 uprising.

The election is going to be the first since the ouster of Hasina, who now lives in exile in India. She was sentenced to death in absentia last year by a special tribunal under the Yunus-led administration. The charges against her relate to crimes against humanity over the deaths of hundreds of people during the 2024 uprising.

Hasina has denounced the trial, terming the court as a “kangaroo court.” In an interview with The Associated Press from her exile in India, she denounced the decision to exclude her party from taking part in the election.

During Hasina’s rule, elections were widely criticized by opposition parties and rights groups as lacking credibility.

An increasingly urgent concern in Bangladesh is the rising prominence of hard-line groups. Their influence has raised alarms about the rights and safety of women and religious minorities. Minority communities, particularly Hindus, report increased intimidation and incidents of violence, deepening fears about their place in the Muslim-majority nation.

There are growing concerns that the Islamist coalition could exploit these tensions to reassert political influence.

Bangladesh is over 90% Muslim, while around 8% are Hindu.

Jamaat-e-Islami leader Shafiqur Rahman arrives to attend the last day of an election rally for Bangladesh Khilafat Majlis candidate Mamunul Haque, organized by the eleven party alliance in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

A Hindu prays as he opens his shop at a market in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Tarique Rahman, the son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and chairman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), waves to the crowd during an election rally in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Protesters try to demolish a statue of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, father of Bangladesh's leader Sheikh Hasina, after she resigned as Prime Minister, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Rajib Dhar, File)

*Head of the Bangladesh's interim government and Nobel laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus, center, displays a political charter called 'July National Charter' at an event outside Bangladesh's national parliament complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, Oct. 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu, File)

Protesters celebrate outside the Bangladesh Parliament after getting the news of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's resignation, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Aug. 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Abid Hasan, File)

Jamaat-e-Islami leader Shafiqur Rahman, second right in front, greets to the supporters as he arrives to attend the last day of an election rally for Bangladesh Khilafat Majlis candidate Mamunul Haque, organized by the eleven party alliance in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Jamaat-e-Islami leader Shafiqur Rahman and other leaders attend the last day of an election rally for Bangladesh Khilafat Majlis candidate Mamunul Haque, organized by the eleven party alliance in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Jamaat-e-Islami leader Shafiqur Rahman, centre, and other leaders hold their election symbol during the last day of an election rally for Bangladesh Khilafat Majlis candidate Mamunul Haque, organized by the eleven party alliance in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

Commuters travel on rickshaws in a market on the eve of national election in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Hold on to those Thanksgiving turkeys! WKRP is coming to Cincinnati — for real this time.

“I cannot, by contract, tell you when. I cannot tell you who. But I can tell you, direct to the camera, WKRP, after 48 years, is coming to Cincinnati,” D.P. McIntire, who runs the media nonprofit that is auctioning the famous call letters, told The Associated Press. “Book it! It’s done!”

The call sign was made famous by “WKRP in Cincinnati,” a CBS television sitcom that ran from 1978 to 1982. It made stars of actors like Loni Anderson and Richard Sanders, whose bumbling newsman Les Nessman reported on a Thanksgiving promotion gone bad when live but flightless turkeys were dropped from a helicopter.

McIntire remembers watching the show’s first episode — featuring disc jockeys Dr. Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) and Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) — in the living room with his parents and older sister.

“And at the end of the 30-minute episode,” he said, “I got up and I proclaimed, `I’m going to be in radio. And if I ever have the opportunity, I’m going to run a station called WKRP.’”

McIntire said he got his first on-air job at 13 as a news anchor at WNQQ “Wink FM” in Blairsville, Pennsylvania.

Fast forward to 2014, when his North Carolina-based nonprofit acquired the call sign from the Federal Communications Commission. Stations in Dallas, Georgia, and Alexandria, Tennessee, previously bore the letters.

McIntire laughs as he recalls his chat with a woman in the agency’s audio division.

He had two sets of call letters in mind. She told him he needed a third.

“Being the jokester that I am, I said, `Well, if you need three, and if it’s available, we’ll take WKRP,’” he said. “And 90 seconds later, she came back and she said, `Mr. McIntire. Congratulations. You’re the general manager of WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina.’”

WKRP-LP — 101.9 on the FM dial — went live Nov. 30, 2015. The LP stands for “low power,” a class of station created to serve more local audiences that didn’t want mass-market content.

“Our format is what radio used to be 35 years ago in small-town America,” he said. "There is Greats of the ‘80s, Sounds of the ’70s, '90s Rewind," as well as local news and “specialty programming.”

LPFM is restricted to nonprofit organizations like his Oak City Media, and it’s definitely local.

“Your broadcast capacity is limited to 100 watts,” McIntire said. “So, your average range is between, depending on your terrain and circumstances, 4 and 12 miles (6 and 19 kilometers) in any direction. Enough to cover a small town.”

And, by necessity, it’s a low-budget affair.

The transmitter is in a corner of McIntire’s garage, between a recycling bin and the cleaning supplies. The broadcast antenna sits atop a 25-foot (7.62-meter) metal flagpole in the backyard. The studio — microphones and a mixing board hooked up to a computer — is on the first floor of McIntire’s home.

Like the WKRP of television, McIntire and his partners set out to be “irreverent.” One of their offerings is a two-hour show called “Weird Al and Friends,” focusing on the satirical works of Weird Al Yankovic.

They even had an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway. But don’t call the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals — they hand out gift certificates to a local grocery store.

“We don’t toss them out of helicopters,” he said with a laugh.

This news comes hot on the heels of the decision to shutter CBS News Radio after nearly a century in operation. After more than a decade on the air, the 56-year-old McIntire decided it was time to pass the reins.

“We’re in a position where the older members like me who started the station are turning the leadership over to younger members,” he said. “They’re not interested in radio.”

They put out a call for bids to use the call letters on FM and AM radio, as well as television and digital television.

They intend to use the proceeds for a new nonprofit venture called Independent Broadcast Consultants. He said IBC will be “geared specifically toward helping these new broadcasters get up and running, get the consulting that they need in order to be, hopefully, more successful than we have been.”

Oak City Media was all set to hand off the television-related suffixes — WKRP-TV and WKRP-DT — when another group defaulted on the agreement, McIntire said. But he said the Cincinnati deal is in the bag, he just can’t legally discuss it.

“It will be radio,” he said. “But that’s all I can tell you at this time.”

Robert Thompson, who uses a season 2 episode of “WKRP” in his TV history class at Syracuse University, said it’s telling that people see real value in a fictional station whose call letters invoke the word “crap.”

“The value comes from the love of the characters for each other,” he said. “And now by buying this thing, the value comes from our love of the characters themselves.”

Whatever they do with the call sign, McIntire hopes they will be true to the show that inspired it.

“It has a special place in the hearts of an awful lot of people,” he said. “And we have been very, very, very proud to have been a steward of that legacy.”

This story has been updated to correct that the studio is on the first floor of the home, not the basement.

D.P. McIntire leans against a deck beneath the WKRP radio antenna in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

D.P. McIntire points to the transmitter for WKRP radio in a corner of his garage in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

The WKRP radio antenna sits atop a 25-foot flagpole behind D.P. McIntire's home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

A photo of the cast members of the sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati" sits in a window at the home of D.P. McIntire in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)

D.P. McIntire stands beneath a WKRP banner in the backyard of his home in Raleigh, N.C., on Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Allen G. Breed)