The sound builds first. It starts as a low hum in the neighbourhood courtyards, rises to a chorus of slogans on the bustling city streets, and finally gathers into a roar beneath towering stages of light and sound. This is the familiar sensory symphony of a Bangladesh election. In the coming days, over 127 million citizens will be called upon to perform the most sacred act in a democracy: To choose.
Yet, in the midst of this overwhelming sensory spectacle of campaigning -- the press of the crowd, the glare of the floodlights, the earnest promises echoing from loudspeakers -- a profound, unsettling silence lingers at the edges. It’s the silence of a house divided against itself, of a conversation that has, for decades, refused to happen.
In this charged moment, the eminent economist Professor Rehman Sobhan has offered a critique that cuts through the noise with the quiet force of truth. He labels the government’s parallel referendum on 38 complex reforms a “non-serious proposition” and a “cosmetic arrangement.”
His argument is devastatingly simple: Asking for a simple “yes” or “no” on matters the public has not been taught to understand is not democracy; it is a hollow ritual. True reform, he insists, is a patient, legislative process that must be “debated in parliament.”
But Prof Sobhan’s real insight, the one that deserves our deepest contemplation, lies not in his critique but in his quiet prescription. He expresses a hope, one he calls “cautious,” for something seemingly modest: A “functional parliament.”
Do not mistake this for a small idea. In a polity haunted by a history of exclusion and a present tense with boycott, this is not a retreat. It is a profound tactical invitation. It is a call for all political actors to step back from the precipice of total confrontation and agree to meet in the first, most fundamental room of democracy. It is an acknowledgment that before we can heal our deepest wounds, we must first agree to sit in the same room and talk.
The architecture of confrontation
To understand the radical nature of this simple proposal, we must first recognize the architecture of our political landscape. For too long, our politics has been built on a foundation best described by the German theorist Carl Schmitt: The relentless distinction between friend and enemy.
In this worldview, the political opponent is not a rival with a different idea for the nation’s good. They are an existential threat to be neutralized, excluded, or defeated by any means necessary. This is the logic of a zero-sum game where compromise is seen as treason and the only victory is total victory.
We have lived the consequences of this logic. It is written in the tragic, unresolved chapters of our history that Prof Sobhan alludes to -- the cycles of violence, the prolonged “wilderness” for major political actors, and the transformation of governance into what he critically terms “absolute rule.”
When politics is an existential war, the state’s immense power -- what the great sociologist Max Weber defined as its monopoly on legitimate force -- becomes a prize to be captured and wielded against the “enemy,” rather than an instrument for the collective good.
The result is a brittle system where losing an election is not a democratic rotation of power, but a prelude to being pushed into the political abyss. This, Prof Sobhan argues, is the proof of a missing “political settlement” -- the foundational agreement on the basic rules of the game that every stable democracy requires.
The empty room and the sound of democracy
This brings us to the central, dysfunctional space in our national life: The Jatiya Sangsad. For years, its majestic halls have often echoed not with the vigorous, clarifying clash of ideas, but with the silence of a one-sided monologue or the hollow sound of a foregone conclusion.
The parliament, designed to be the vibrant workshop of the nation, became a ceremonial stage. When debate atrophies, politics does not disappear; it simply floods into more destructive arenas.
It spills into the streets as violent confrontation, retreats into secretive corridors of power, or festers in the public heart as a grievance that can never be addressed.
This is why Prof Sobhan’s focus on a “functional” parliament is so tactical and so wise. He is not asking for a grand, immediate solution to every historical injustice or every bitter contention. He is proposing a radical first step: To make the parliament work as it was intended.
We have glimpsed what this can look like. Recall sessions where the air grew thick with the heat of democratic accountability -- when opposition MPs, with the nation watching, fiercely debated the government on the crippling electricity and energy crisis, holding ministers to public account.
In those moments, the parliament was not a rubber stamp; it was a crucible. It was performing its most basic duty: To question, to scrutinize, and to force the executive to explain itself to the people.
A functional parliament is the machinery for transforming Schmitt’s dangerous “enemy” back into a political adversary. It is the daily, public practice of rebuilding what Weber called legitimacy -- the belief that power is exercised rightly.
In that room, through the tedious, unglamorous work of committee hearings, bill amendments, and question hours, trust can be built, brick by painful brick. It is the only arena where the “inclusive rules of the game” can be forged through practice, not just proclaimed in manifestos.
The courage of the first step
The challenge before us is starkly illuminated by the present moment. We approach a pivotal election where a major political force, the Awami League, has been barred from the ballot. Its leader, from exile, warns that an election born of such exclusion sows the seeds of future instability. This is the very cycle of boycott and retribution that has crippled us for generations.
Sobhan’s call for inclusion is not an endorsement of any party’s past actions; it is a clear-eyed recognition of political reality. A parliament that excludes major strands of national thought cannot be functional, and a nation that cannot house its core debates under one roof remains perilously divided.
Therefore, building a simple, working parliament is the most urgent national project. It requires a collective act of political courage -- a courage to de-escalate. It asks all actors to make a tactical retreat from the battlefield of total victory to the negotiating table of sustained dialogue. It means prioritizing the long-term health of the state over short-term partisan advantage.
Imagine that room. Not as a chamber of echoes, but as a marketplace of ideas. Imagine it filled not with the cold silence of exclusion, but with the heated, respectful, and ultimately productive sound of a nation arguing with itself to find a way forward.
The questions of justice for past traumas, the design of our electoral system, the vision for our economy -- these monumental tasks can only begin to be resolved in a space where all who hold a significant part of the national conscience have a voice and a stake.
Professor Sobhan has lit a path with his cautious optimism. He has pointed away from the dazzling but empty spectacle of a top-down referendum and toward the grounded, difficult, and essential work of democratic repair. The architecture for this work already exists, embodied in the stone and glass of the Shangshad Bhaban.
The missing ingredient is not a blueprint, but a choice. The choice to return to that first room, to take a seat, and to begin, at long last, the nation’s most important conversation.
We must find the courage to make that choice. Our future, as one people, depends on it.
Zakir Kibria is a Bangladeshi writer, policy analyst and entrepreneur based in Kathmandu, Nepal. His email address is [email protected].
