The US-based TIME magazine in its latest issue published on Wednesday called Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairman Tarique Rahman the ‘clear front runner’ in the forthcoming February 12 elections as it carried an analysis ahead of the polls.

‘Rahman is the clear front runner in Feb 12 elections, which were called after Hasina’s ouster in a student-led popular uprising 18 months ago,’ read the article.

It said Tarique was positioning himself as a ‘bridge between a political aristocracy that dates back to Bangladesh’s liberation struggle and the aspirations of its young revolutionaries’.

The TIME magazine wrote it was also tinged with irony since, as Bangladesh’s de facto opposition leader, Tarique’s speeches had been banned from local media for a decade by autocratic ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

‘The thing is that I’m not very good at talking anyway . . . but if you ask me to do something, I try my best,’ Tarique told the magazine.

The TIME wrote to his supporters, Tarique was a ‘persecuted redeemer returning to save his beleaguered homeland’ while he ‘insists he’s the right person to heal his riven nation’.

‘It’s not because I’m the son of my father and mother [rather] my party supporters are the reason why I’m here today,’ he said.

The magazine said it had been a whirlwind few weeks for Tarique, who arrived in Bangladesh on Dec 25, last year when he was greeted by hundreds of thousands of rapturous supporters who had waited throughout the night at Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.

The analysis noted that just five days later his mother Bangladesh’s first female prime minister Khaleda Zia passed away following a long illness, drawing even larger numbers to throng the sprawling capital to pay their respects.

Tarique described the situation in welling eyes that it was ‘very heavy in my heart’. ‘But the lesson I learned from her is that when you have a responsibility, you must perform it.’

TIME, however, observed that responsibility might be nothing less than following in her footsteps and commented ‘Bangladeshis appear willing to take him at his word’.

The magazine noted that opinion polls from late December showed support for his BNP at around 70 per cent with its nearest challenger Jamaat-e-Islami, at 19 per cent.