Bangladesh’s Leaders Need to Stop Making the Same Mistake

One welcome effect of Bangladesh’s return to parliamentary democracy: The words “Caretaker Government” have again become a governance goal rather than a movement slogan.

We can assume the next parliamentary election, the 14th, will be held under a caretaker administration: BNP campaigned for more than a decade to reinstate the system, committed to it in its manifesto for the 2026 election, and has worked toward forming the new caretaker system since taking office.

What remains open is the question that has always decided whether the system works: who designs it, and whether the people who lose the next election will trust it.

The reason Bangladesh needs such an unusual institution begins with arithmetic: under first past the post, the candidate with the most votes in each of 300 constituencies takes the seat, and the party with the most seats takes the state.

A government elected this way controls far more than a legislative majority. It controls the civil service, the police, the election machinery, and, through appointments, much of the judiciary's future. 

In a winner-take-all system, the losers lose nearly everything, and the system gives them little incentive to accept a loss as a loss.

The imbalance becomes even more weighty when the winner also holds a two-thirds majority, the threshold the Constitution sets for amending itself. At that point, the ruling party can rewrite the rules that are supposed to check it.

The Opposition's Veto

Against all of this, the opposition holds one powerful card. It decides whether to take part in the election at all.

A boycott cannot always stop a government from holding an election or from claiming victory afterward. The Awami League proved that in 2014 and again in 2024. What a boycott reliably does is strip the result of legitimacy and put it on a death watch. A parliament elected without its opponents governs without the consent of a large part of the country, and every institution it touches carries the same taint. That deficit always comes due. Sometimes it comes due within months.

Sometimes it takes years, and the country pays a terrible price in the meantime.

How BNP's Last Two Governments Ended

In the June 1996 election, BNP won 116 seats. That is the tally of a competitive party, and it suggests Khaleda Zia had a credible path to re-election had she handled the caretaker demand differently.

Instead, the Awami League returned to power for the first time in 21 years, and Sheikh Hasina began her first term as prime minister.

The second came a decade later, when the election scheduled for January 2007 collapsed into 1/11, an episode too recent and too familiar to need recounting here.

The Awami League's Mirror Image

The Awami League's record runs in the opposite direction, and teaches the same lesson.

Its best outcome came from the one election it handed over fairly. Sheikh Hasina completed a full five-year term in 2001 and transferred power to a caretaker government under Justice Latifur Rahman. The Awami League lost badly that October, falling to 62 seats. Yet because it lost a fair election, it remained a legitimate force in national politics, with its organization and its claim on voters intact. Seven years later, it returned with a landslide.

Its worst outcome came from the three elections it engineered and ended with Hasina in exile, the party's activities banned, and the Awami League locked out of the 2026 election entirely.

Why Restoring the Caretaker System is Only Half the Job

It would be comforting to conclude that the caretaker system is the cure, and that its restoration settles the matter. The 2006 crisis shows why it does not. The caretaker system collapsed in 2006 because BNP ultimately failed to secure the Awami League's buy-in to participate in the 2007 election.

That is the lesson that should loudly reverberate for the current government: a caretaker system designed by one side, or reshaped by one side, invites the other side to reject it the moment the stakes become real. The design, and the bipartisanship invested in that design, is the safeguard. And the design is now on the table.

An Opening, and Its Erosion

By the standards of Bangladeshi politics, BNP began this new five-year mandate on remarkably good terms with its opponents. Two days before forming the government, Tarique Rahman visited the homes of Jamaat Ameer Shafiqur Rahman and NCP Convener Nahid Islam, and both received him with flowers. The gesture had few precedents in our politics, and it set a new standard for political maturity.

That goodwill has somewhat ebbed. When parliament formed a special committee on constitutional amendment in July, chaired by Home Minister Salahuddin Ahmed, opposition MPs walked out in protest over the process. They have nominated no members to the committee and stayed away from its consultations.

The caretaker system sits inside this dispute, and its design remains undecided. After the committee's September 29 consultation, Salahuddin Ahmed said the committee had not yet settled how, with whom, or in what manner the caretaker government will be formed. He called for open discussion. This creates the best available opportunity to rebuild trust.

BNP does not need to give up its own views on the design to seize this opportunity. What it needs is to involve the opposition materially, and in a spirit of good faith, in shaping the caretaker system before the bill reaches the floor. That means sharing drafts early, treating the opposition's proposals as serious contributions, and adopting them where they would strengthen public confidence in the system. The doors our Honorable Home Minister says are open must lead to a durable caretaker design.

Opposition involvement matters for a practical reason. As the 14th election approaches, opposition parties will be looking for a reason to cry foul. A caretaker system the opposition helped shape is a system the opposition will find very hard to denounce.

What Neither of His Parents Could Do

This is Tarique Rahman's opportunity to accomplish something neither of his legendary parents managed: to come to power in a free and fair election, complete a full term, and then facilitate another free and fair election when the term ends.

Ziaur Rahman rose to power through the upheavals that followed August 1975 and was assassinated in 1981, before any test of a peaceful handover could come. Khaleda Zia came to power through free elections twice, in 1991 and 2001, and completed both terms. Each time, the next election failed: first in the one-sided vote of February 1996, then in the collapse that produced 1/11.

Sheikh Hasina did achieve all three, once, between 1996 and 2001. Her record shows that the feat is possible, and also that achieving it once guarantees nothing. What she built by handing over power in 2001, she dismantled a decade later by abolishing the system that made the handover possible.

The Window

BNP has set a year-end deadline for its constitutional amendment process, and the caretaker provisions will be written within it. The window for the opposition's involvement is the next few months.

There is an uncomfortable echo in the present moment. The caretaker system was born in 1996 from a parliament the opposition had boycotted. Its successor is now being designed by a committee the opposition is boycotting. The first system worked for a time and then broke over a question of trust. A second system built the same way risks the same fate.

BNP has the votes to write the caretaker system alone. Our history makes clear what happens to governments that use such power to set the terms of the next election by themselves. Tarique Rahman has the goodwill, the mandate, and the time to do this differently. The most durable thing he can build in his first term is a caretaker system both the government and the opposition can claim to have shaped, and thus will be owned by both.

Ehteshamul Haque is a lawyer who focuses on technology transactions. He teaches corporate law at American University.