Bangladesh will have its first presidential election in 35 years between Mirza Alamgir and Oli Ahmed.

Bangladesh’s first presidential election in 35 years is scheduled to take place on Thursday, with Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, a longstanding member of the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), emerging as the front-runner.

The 84-year-old Colonel (retd) Oli Ahmed, the chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the candidate of the 11-party opposition alliance led by Jamaat-e-Islami, will face off against the 78-year-old BNP candidate Alamgir. The Election Commission has announced that voting will take place at the parliament (Jatiya Sangsad) from 2 to 5 p.m. On August 16, both candidates’ nomination papers were deemed legitimate.

The election is Bangladesh’s first competitive presidential election since 1991; in previous decades, the position has mostly been filled by consensus and uncontested elections. Alamgir urged party members to support him during his speech at the BNP parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday. The experienced leader became emotional and started crying multiple times, according to several politicians present at the meeting.

Additionally, Alamgir promised to never compromise on the independence and sovereignty of Bangladesh. According to The Daily Star, which cited sources at the Secretariat and Parliament Secretariat, the president-elect is set to take the oath of office as Bangladesh’s new leader on Friday nite at Bangabhaban’s Darbar Hall.

Mohammed Shahabuddin, a close adviser to Sheikh Hasina, the ousted prime minister, resigned last month due to health issues before serving out his five-year term, necessitating the election.  Alamgir, a long-time party secretary general and close friend of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, was proposed as the ruling party’s presidential candidate by Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, who is also the BNP chairman.

A new president must be chosen within ninety days of the position being vacant, according to the Constitution. Following the vacancy, Hafiz Uddin Ahmad, the Speaker of Parliament, is now functioning as president. Alamgir is in an excellent position to win the presidency since the BNP, which came back to power after winning the elections on February 12, currently has a two-thirds majority in Parliament.

Alamgir would be the 23rd president of Bangladesh if elected. Serving as acting secretary general since 2011 and officially assuming the position in 2016, he has been one of the BNP’s most well-known leaders for almost 20 years.

He was instrumental in running the BNP while Rahman was overseas and Zia, the party’s then-chairperson and previous prime minister, was imprisoned.  Under Bangladesh’s parliamentary system, the president is essentially a ceremonial head of state, but he or she possesses important constitutional duties, such as the ability to name the chief justice and prime minister.

Despite being the ultimate commander of the armed forces, the president typically uses these capabilities on the prime minister’s recommendation. However, under the caretaker government system that was recently reinstated to oversee general elections, political commentators suggested that the presidency would take on more importance. The president’s authority over the armed forces may grow considerably during this time.

Additionally, the observers speculated that Alamgir’s nomination might be a planned manoeuvre by the BNP, which had pledged in its election campaign to change the Constitution to grant the president more authority.  When Bangladesh was still East Pakistan, Alamgir, an economist by training, started his political career as a left-leaning student activist. With India’s assistance, Bangladesh was freed from Pakistan in 1971.