Large mandates are usually treated as moments of political triumph. In institutional terms, however, they are something else: a change in the conditions under which power operates. Beyond a certain parliamentary threshold, debates give way to convenience. The real test begins later, in how systems run when resistance is no longer a risk.
A parliamentary majority is familiar territory in democracies. Governments win them, lose them, negotiate around them. A two-thirds majority belongs to a different category. It alters the temperature of the room. It changes how institutions behave, where allies place themselves, and most importantly, how opponents calculate their moves. The numbers look like celebration material. Administratively, they function more like a structural shift.
That distinction is easy to miss in the first days after a result. Public attention tends to rest on spectacle—gestures, statements, the choreography of optics. Systems, however, respond to incentives, not spectacle. And incentives change when parliamentary arithmetic crosses certain thresholds. What becomes possible on paper begins to influence behaviour in practice. Not immediately. Gradually. Sometimes almost humbly.
Tarique Rahman’s political story has long unfolded at a physical distance. For years, his presence in Bangladesh’s political life was shaped by absence. That absence carried a curious advantage. Distance allows projection. Supporters imagine possibilities. Critics imagine risks. Neither has to confront the administrative reality of governance. Proximity removes that buffer. Once authority is exercised from within the system, expectations acquire weight. They stop being rhetorical. They start becoming procedural. Earlier in December, I wrote about the expectations surrounding his return in an article published in this daily. That question has already been answered. The one that matters now is how power settles once it arrives.
A supermajority adds another layer to that transition from expectation to execution. While it reduces friction, challenges arise when legislative resistance becomes harder to organise. Committees fall into alignment more easily. Amendments that once required negotiation start looking easily achievable, at least numerically. None of this is automatically harmful. Some governments use strong mandates to clear policy backlogs or stabilise long-stalled reforms. If leveraged correctly, this can be a benefit for a political landscape such as ours that is still navigating a deeply unsettled institutional transition.
For a start, the prime minister-designate has identified the right pressures. Speaking at his first press conference following the results, he framed his message around unity rather than division, restraint rather than retaliation, and order rather than spectacle—acknowledging, at least rhetorically, the institutional anxieties that tend to surface when mandates become overwhelming. How Tarique Rahman will translate these assurances into actions will determine how institutions—and by extension the nation—will read the mandate itself.
The watchout is that institutional atmosphere shifts all the same. The system senses that fewer obstacles remain between intention and implementation.
Political history suggests that this is the point where governing styles begin to reveal themselves: not in speeches or slogans, but in practices. Appointment patterns, file movement, enforcement tone, and regulatory signalling. These details rarely generate headlines, though they often decide whether a political moment settles into stability or gradually unravels. Political analysts tend to watch these inconspicuous indicators first. They know that systems signal their direction long before they arrive at their conclusions.
Outside the country, the result will be read differently. Foreign governments, multilateral partners, donors, and investors seldom interpret election results as emotional verdicts. What matters to them is whether rules still hold once political momentum builds. A strong mandate can reassure if it delivers predictability. The same mandate can be unsettling if it points to rapid redesign without institutional consultation. The difference lies less in ideology than in method. In international perception, stability is essentially behavioural before it is political.
Inside the parliament, the atmosphere is more textured. A dominant majority narrows the space available to opposition actors. Sometimes that encourages constructive adaptation. Most of the time, though, it encourages withdrawal. Much depends on how the governing side treats the absence of immediate challenge. Systems tend to function best when authority acts as though scrutiny were constant, even when it is not. Administrative restraint, practiced early, often prevents built-up confrontation. Once institutions begin adjusting defensively, restoring confidence becomes slow work.
There is also a subtler institutional question beginning to form. Large mandates can create a sense of political invulnerability within the ruling party itself. Members feel they are participating in a turning point. That sentiment can energise unrestrained ambition. It can also test patience with procedural delays. Bureaucratic caution, judicial review, regulatory pacing: these can start to look like obstacles rather than safeguards. Whether they are treated as pain points or as stabilisers will shape how this phase is remembered.
None of this predicts inevitability. Democratic systems around the world have accommodated dominant governments before. Some used their position to deepen institutional credibility. Others discovered, too late, that numerical strength does not automatically translate into sustainable authority. Longevity in office has rarely depended on margins alone. It has depended on whether governance practices convince citizens and stakeholders that rules still matter when they become inconvenient. The 2024 toppled regime has learnt this lesson the hard way.
For a first-time prime minister, the learning curve is rarely about politics. It is about managing administration. Decisions that look straightforward in opposition often become layered once one sits inside the machinery of state. Issues resurface with new challenges or urgency. Laws overlap or contradict with other laws. Agencies operate according to routines that resist change. Navigating this landscape requires a different discipline from mobilising voters. It requires patience with process, as a matter of method and discipline.
This is where large mandates change the test facing leaders, especially when they are holding overwhelming power for the first time. When parliamentary numbers guarantee passage, debate inside the parliament becomes less necessary. The real persuasion shifts elsewhere: toward civil institutions, professional bodies, regulators, courts, and international partners. They cannot be directed in the same way as party members are directed. They respond to signs of continuity, legality, predictability and stability. If those signals are steady, confidence grows. If they fluctuate, uncertainty spreads faster than official assurances can contain it.
Bangladesh has seen moments of political consolidation before. Each has left behind a different institutional aftertaste. Some periods strengthened administrative coherence. Others generated long-rippling consequences that outlasted the governments that produced them. The pattern suggests that outcomes are shaped by what power decides to do once resistance becomes nominal.
That choice appears in ordinary decisions. Whether an appointment prioritises competence or loyalty. Whether criticism is answered with explanation or dismissal. Whether procedural delay is tolerated or circumvented. Whether disagreement is treated as a platform for inclusive decision-making or dissent. While individually these might look like isolated acts, together they form the behavioural pattern of a government.
The true weight of power is measured not by how it is won, but by how it is exercised when it no longer needs to prove itself to mobilise vote banks.
The moment power stops needing permission is the moment it requires discipline. The current result carries a responsibility that is heavier than triumph. It places the ruling party leadership in a position where constraint must increasingly come from within. External limits have already thinned. Internal discipline will have to thicken to compensate for it.
Voters have delivered their verdict. The institutional story begins now.
Earlier, the question was whether expectation would weigh on Tarique Rahman. That question has already run its course. A different burden now begins. The one Kundera described belongs to the phase before power settles. This one arrives afterward, in the period when authority must prove it can govern. What lies ahead is not the weight of expectation, but the treacherous lightness of power.
Tasneem Tayeb is a columnist for The Daily Star. Her X handle is @tasneem_tayeb.
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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