Bangladesh’s first national election after the 2024 mass uprising, held on Thursday, functioned simultaneously as a test of electoral realignment, opposition reconstruction, and constitutional transition. Citizens were voting to choose not only their representatives but also the political coalition that would inherit the responsibility of implementing—not just debating—a sweeping reform agenda authorised through the referendum. The electoral outcome therefore reveals more than party strength. It maps the emerging architecture of post-authoritarian politics and governance.
What is being decided is not only who will govern but whether the institutional settlement emerging from the uprising can acquire sufficient legitimacy to endure. Together, the election and the referendum test the durability of the transition, probing whether constitutional reforms will stabilise the new order or widen its fractures.
The National Citizen Party (NCP) entered the election through an alliance with Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami despite internal disagreements, particularly over Jamaat’s discriminatory position on women. There were also calls, including from individuals not formally affiliated with NCP, urging the party to contest the election independently. Disregarding these pressures, NCP joined the alliance and fielded its candidates in 30 constituencies. They won six seats, while their alliance partner Jamaat secured 68.
I personally observed that there were voters who had intended to support NCP but moved away because of this alliance. Many of these voters also did not favour the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) for various reasons. Left with limited choices, a significant number felt politically frustrated. Some abstained from voting altogether, while others voted for BNP out of an anti-Jamaat sentiment. By not contesting the election independently, NCP missed an opportunity to build its political infrastructure nationwide, which could have benefited it in the long run. This was particularly consequential given the vacuum in Bangladesh’s “religion-independent” political space, currently dominated by BNP.
NCP should now move swiftly to step out of Jamaat’s shadow. Considerable damage has already been done to its identity and public image, making recovery harder than it would have been if it had participated without the alliance. A shift towards constructive political engagement, and away from its current practice of “angry politics,” would be essential for rebuilding NCP’s credibility.
One issue that is likely to return to the forefront of Bangladeshi politics is the question of Independence, which has never lost political relevance. The electoral victory of Kishoreganj’s Md Fazlur Rahman, an outspoken voice for the spirit of 1971 since the ouster of Awami League and a figure criticised by opponents for that stance, illustrates this enduring resonance. His large victory margin signals the continued political potency of the Liberation War narrative.
Indeed, BNP’s explicit and comparatively stronger affinity with the spirit of 1971 than other major parties partly contributed to its landslide victory of 209 seats. BNP was able to balance the spirits of both 1971 and 2024 in its messaging, while some other parties appeared to privilege 2024 and downplay 1971. In so doing, BNP correctly recognised that politics is not only about reflecting public opinion but also about shaping it, and the scale of its victory suggests public endorsement of that strategy.
The would-be main opposition, Jamaat, on the other hand, faced intense criticism over its stance on women’s leadership following the Jamaat ameer’s interview with Al Jazeera. Many perceived the stance as exclusionary and misogynistic, and its seat total may partly reflect public response to this controversy. Yet, for a party that previously struggled to secure more than 18 seats, reaching its current position would have been impossible without substantial female voter support. (At the same time, this electoral ceiling must be situated within the broader opposition vacuum created by the ban on the Awami League’s political activities—a ban tied to its controversial record in power from 2009 to 2024 and the fallout of the mass uprising.) This presents a perennial paradox: why do some among the oppressed support those perceived as their oppressors? The shorthand answer of “Stockholm Syndrome” is often invoked, but the issue demands deeper sociological and educational reflection. Does this signal a shift in societal morality, or does it reveal deeper historical and cultural wounds that periodically resurface and force society to confront how its social fabric was woven?
Questions of societal morality intersect with one of the foremost responsibilities of a future BNP-led government: the task of repairing the wounds of the past decade and a half. The interim government was expected to reverse some of the damage inflicted by the Awami League regime. But it was often seen to be further deepening instability by allowing mob violence to grow and law-and-order conditions to deteriorate. Restoring security must therefore be a primary objective of the incoming government, alongside decisive action against nationwide extortion networks, which eroded public trust and cost BNP significant electoral support even during Thursday’s election.
The new government will also be tasked with honouring the aspirations of the 2024 mass uprising. Referendum results suggest that proposals for major constitutional reforms are likely to pass. Here lies perhaps the most consequential governing challenge.
BNP’s position on several provisions of the July charter diverges from that of Jamaat and NCP. The referendum framework, as structured through the July National Charter (Constitutional Reform) Implementation Order, 2025, appears to lend limited institutional weight to BNP’s recorded objections, signalling early constitutional friction. The reform process itself was designed to manage disagreement without derailing constitutional transition. This objective took institutional form through what may be described as the sidenote doctrine. Under this arrangement, political actors were able to endorse the Charter while formally documenting reservations regarding specific provisions. The framework also permits parties securing electoral mandates on the basis of those reservations to pursue alternative institutional pathways once in office.
Disagreement, in this design, was not treated as an external obstacle to reform but was procedurally incorporated within it. In effect, the reform framework did not eliminate political pressure. It built institutional channels through which that pressure could later be released. This arrangement broadened the coalition capable of participating in constitutional authorship without requiring full ideological alignment.
Yet it also introduces a point of tension at the level of democratic legitimacy. The July charter was presented to voters as a collective reform settlement, even though not all elements of that settlement were insulated from future political revision. A referendum endorsement does not conclusively settle constitutional disagreement. It postpones parts of that disagreement to the parliamentary arena, where electoral mandates and referendum authorisation may intersect uneasily. This creates the possibility of post-referendum conflict over what precisely has been authorised. One position may hold that voters approved reforms as framed in the charter. Another may argue that approval extended to the operational framework established by the Implementation Order. Where these interpretations diverge, political tension is likely to intensify.
Any instability that emerges in the coming months is therefore unlikely to arise from partisan rivalry alone. It may instead flow from the embedded design of the reform process itself, a design that secures constitutional authorisation at the ballot box while leaving the meaning and execution of that authorisation subject to ongoing political negotiation. If competing actors mobilise supporters to back rival interpretations of referendum authorisation, constitutional disagreement could spill beyond parliamentary procedure into mass political confrontation. How a BNP-led government interprets and navigates this institutional terrain will likely determine whether the transition consolidates into constitutional stability or slides into renewed contestation.
Dr Kazi ASM Nurul Huda is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Dhaka and the Cmelikova Visiting International Scholar in Leadership and Ethics at the University of Richmond. He can be reached at [email protected].
Views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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