Manifestos of Illusion

As Bangladesh approaches its 13th national parliamentary election, the political atmosphere is thick with promises. Campaigns are reaching their final stretch, party manifestos have been unveiled, and voters are once again being courted with visions of prosperity, stability and transformation.

Yet beneath the glossy rhetoric lies a familiar problem: many of these promises are exaggerated, vague, and in some cases, fundamentally deceptive.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), in its newly announced manifesto, places the recovery and reconstruction of what it calls the country’s “fragile economy” at the top of its agenda.

Under the slogan “Bangladesh First”, the party has set an ambitious goal: transforming Bangladesh into a modern upper-middle-income country by 2034 and building a one-trillion-dollar economy. On paper, the vision is appealing. In practice, it raises serious questions about feasibility.

To reach a trillion-dollar economy within a decade, Bangladesh would need to sustain GDP growth rates close to 9 per cent annually.

Such growth is not impossible, but it requires massive and sustained investment. At present, the investment climate is far from supportive.

Private investment has fallen to around 22.5% of GDP in the 2025-26 fiscal year. International experience shows that no country can achieve sustainable high growth without private investment levels of at least 30 to 35 per cent of GDP. Last fiscal year, GDP growth hovered around 4 per cent, and even optimistic projections suggest it may reach only about 5.5 per cent this year. The gap between aspiration and reality is stark.

BNP’s proposal to raise the tax-to-GDP ratio to 15% is another example. Economists broadly agree that Bangladesh needs to increase this ratio to finance development and social protection.

However, achieving this would require a dramatic shift towards direct taxation, alongside deep reforms in tax administration. Given the entrenched culture of corruption, inefficiency and weak enforcement, most experts doubt whether such a transformation is realistic in the near term.

Other parties are no less ambitious. Jamaat-e-Islami has promised to attract 15 billion dollars in foreign direct investment (FDI) by 2031, a target that already sounds outdated and implausible. Currently, Bangladesh’s FDI inflow is less than 0.5 per cent of GDP.

Without political stability, regulatory certainty and a credible legal framework, such promises amount to little more than wishful thinking.

Employment generation is another area where rhetoric outpaces reality. Both BNP and Jamaat claim that they will create between 10 million and 50 million new jobs.

Yet job creation is inseparable from investment, productivity growth and structural reform. In an environment marked by weak investment, a complex tax structure, very low credit flow to private sector and suffocating bureaucratic red tape, such large-scale employment generation is simply not credible.

BNP’s proposal to issue “family cards” to four crore families is, in principle, a positive social welfare initiative. But the manifesto remains silent on a critical question: where will the funding come from? Without transparent financing plans, even well-intentioned programmes risk becoming fiscal burdens or empty promises.

At a psychological level, political manifestos often function as a form of collective hallucination. Parties understand that people prefer hope to hard truths.

As Psychology Today notes, individuals facing crisis are more likely to be drawn to miraculous assurances than to complex, rational solutions. Political actors exploit this tendency by painting colourful dreams, visions that are emotionally satisfying but economically unattainable.

Manifestos are thus designed less as policy roadmaps and more as emotional instruments. Research by Transparency International Bangladesh repeatedly shows that the lack of accountability is the primary reason manifestos remain unimplemented.

Once in power, parties tend to prioritise partisan interests and patronage networks over electoral commitments. GDP growth targets and per-capita income projections are inflated, while concrete strategies to tackle inflation, dollar shortages and systemic banking sector looting are conspicuously absent.

The core problem is structural. There is little connection between a country’s economic capacity and the ambitions outlined in party manifestos.

As a result, these documents often remain mere “paper promises”. Compounding the issue is the absence of any legal obligation to implement manifestos.

While Articles 48 to 57 of the Bangladesh Constitution define executive powers, there is no provision for legal action against a government that fails to honour its electoral pledges.

When the electoral system itself lacks transparency, political parties learn a dangerous lesson: they can retain or regain power without delivering on promises. In such a context, public mandates lose their significance, and manifestos become politically expendable.

Globally, many democracies now use “manifesto trackers”, independent mechanisms that monitor and publicly report the implementation of electoral promises. Bangladesh would benefit from a similar innovation.

An independent commission or digital dashboard could publish data every six months, showing what percentage of manifesto commitments have been fulfilled. Such technological transparency could strengthen accountability and rebuild public trust.

Equally important is the absence of any “audit” of manifestos. After five years in office, do parties ever present a comprehensive account of what they delivered and what they failed to deliver? The answer is almost always no. This lack of accountability encourages parties to repeat the cycle of unrealistic promises election after election.

Ultimately, the problem is not merely about overambitious targets. It is about political opacity, concentration of power and a weak culture of commitment to citizens.

Until transparency, accountability and institutional checks are strengthened, election manifestos in Bangladesh will continue to serve as instruments of illusion, seductive, hopeful and ultimately hollow.