The Problem with the Referendum

On February 12, Bangladeshis are being asked to approve sweeping constitutional changes through a referendum held alongside a general election.

Voters are forced to answer a single Yes/No question that bundles together multiple, far-reaching reforms -- institutional restructuring, electoral arrangements, binding charter commitments, the creation of an upper chamber of parliament, and matters of nationhood, among many other things.

This denies citizens the most basic democratic right: the right to decide issue by issue. This is not simplification. It is compressed consent.

A voter may agree with one reform and oppose another. That distinction is erased. The choice is no longer deliberative; it is coerced by design.

Confusion and Misleading Marketing

The confusion is widespread. Even political parties involved in drafting the July Charter have acknowledged that the referendum question is too complicated for voters. A referendum that ordinary citizens cannot explain in their own words has already failed its democratic test.

Instead of confronting this confusion, voters are being told something far more troubling: that change will come only if they vote Yes.

This is a false promise. Real change comes from political behavior, institutional practice, and accountability over time, not from a mere single tick on a ballot.

By framing the choice this way, voters are being pressured into believing that rejecting a confusing proposal means rejecting change itself.

That is not persuasion. It is coercive framing. When hope is used to override understanding, consent is no longer freely given. It is extracted.

A Global Anomaly

Defenders often cite Brexit as an example of similar challenges, but the comparison reveals how problematic this process is. Brexit asked one clear question: Should the UK remain in or leave the EU? Voters understood what they were voting on even if they did not understand the full implications.

Chile's experience is instructive. Between 2020 and 2023, Chile held multiple referendums on constitutional replacement. When drafts were completed, voters were asked straightforward questions: "Do you approve the text of the New Constitution?"

Both were rejected (62% in 2022, 56% in 2023). The questions were honest. Voters could read complete documents, debate specific provisions, and know exactly what they were rejecting.

Bangladesh's referendum bundles multiple, unrelated reforms into a single question while only highlighting popular elements on the ballot.

Voters see appealing reforms mentioned -- electoral changes, anti-corruption measures -- but the full scope, its costs, and meaningful discussion around trade-offs remain obfuscated.

Ireland holds separate referendums for distinct constitutional amendments. Swiss voters decide on individual policy questions. Even in countries with weaker democratic traditions, constitutional referendums involve a single coherent proposal.

What we have here is selective presentation designed to secure approval through incomplete information. The ballot emphasizes what is popular; the fine print includes what is contentious.

Why Hold a Referendum at All?

This raises a fundamental question: Why was this referendum necessary in the first place?

When defenders are asked about the bundled complexity, they respond: "Constitutional reforms are complicated. It's impossible to break them down into simple yes/no questions."

If that is true, then why hold a referendum on something voters cannot reasonably understand?

The major political parties had already agreed on key reforms through the July Charter. If the goal was legitimacy, parliamentary approval would have been appropriate.

Instead, we have a referendum; not because the public demanded it, but to bind future parliaments legally, to lock in arrangements beyond the reach of normal democratic revision.

The referendum was designed not to empower voters but to constrain future political actors by claiming popular mandate for arrangements the public does not actually understand.

The Risk of Discrediting Reform

This is the deepest flaw: It stakes the entire reform agenda on a single, flawed vote. If the "no" vote wins, this very important reform process does not simply pause, it becomes politically toxic.

Opponents will claim the people have rejected reform. The window for meaningful change will close, not because Bangladeshis oppose reform, but because they rejected a poorly articulated referendum question.

Chile's experience proves this. After two failed referendums, President Gabriel Boric declared the constitutional process closed. Chilean analysts spoke of "constitutional fatigue."

Despite 78% initially supporting constitutional replacement in 2020, the failed referendums left Chileans concluding that "constitutional texts cannot solve all social troubles." The reform agenda didn't just fail; it became discredited.

Bangladesh risks the same outcome. If this referendum fails, it will be weaponized as proof that "the people don't want reform." The political space for constitutional change will collapse, potentially for years.

Rationally speaking, the decision to hold this referendum was itself flawed. It attempted to push parties into a legal bind. But when the process is confusing, when the question is bundled, when voters are not genuinely informed, that legal bind becomes a trap.

Now we see the effort to cover this flawed process with fraudulent marketing: "vote yes or nothing changes."

What About a Rogue Opposition?

The entire architecture of these reform proposals assumes we need mechanisms to check a rogue party in power. But there is another scenario: What if we have a rogue opposition party?

What if the opposition is not interested in constructive governance but in making the ruling party look bad at any cost? What if their strategy is obstruction -- to make it impossible to run a functioning state, to block necessary legislation, to paralyze decision-making?

The reform proposals imagine a well-intentioned opposition acting as responsible custodians of democratic norms. History suggests this is naïve. Opposition parties in Bangladesh have frequently prioritized defeating the government over serving the public interest.

We may be unknowingly being asked to constitutionalize gridlock in the name of preventing authoritarianism. But gridlock in a country with Bangladesh's challenges is its own form of violence -- structural violence against those who cannot afford to wait while politicians play institutional games.

The bundled referendum is particularly insidious here. Many voters may support electoral accountability and anti-corruption mechanisms but oppose this costly, vaguely defined upper chamber.

Because they cannot vote yes on reforms, they support without also approving questionable institutional additions, they are forced to vote no on everything. This is the tyranny of the bundled question: It turns potential allies of reform into opponents of the entire package.

There are fundamental questions that require public engagement and careful deliberation, which has not happened. However well-intentioned these reforms may be, a bad choice designed by a few people will be extremely costly for the nation in the long term.

We cannot afford it at this critical stage when the country requires quick turnaround and effective handling of multiple crises in a very complex world.

Upper Chamber Test

Even if the process was clear, the proposed upper chamber remains problematic. The financial burden alone should give pause. A bicameral parliament means doubling much of the legislative infrastructure.

If the upper chamber has 100 members, each receives salary and allowances. Add support staff, office space, security, travel, pensions, healthcare, and administrative apparatus. Factor in physical infrastructure -- new chamber building, committee rooms, support facilities -- and initial capital costs could reach hundreds of crores, possibly more.

And for what gain? Bangladesh's problem is not the absence of institutions but weak accountability, poor legislative scrutiny, and excessive party control. An upper chamber does not address these failures. It adds delay, duplication, and another arena for elite bargaining.

In a unitary state like Bangladesh, an upper house has no clear constitutional necessity. Federal systems like the United States, India, or Germany use upper chambers to represent constituent states. Bangladesh has no such federal structure.

Where Real Reform Is Being Avoided

There is a deeper reason this referendum relies on structure rather than substance. Real political reform can only come from within political parties. You cannot constitutionalize internal democracy.

You cannot impose ethical behavior through charters or new chambers. When reform is forced from the outside, parties adapt, find new loopholes, and rig the new system the way they rigged the old one.

Bangladesh has seen this cycle before. Structures change. Names change. Behavior does not.

The separation of the judiciary is the clearest example. In 2007, Bangladesh formally implemented the separation of the lower judiciary from executive control under the previous caretaker regime.

On paper, it was a historic achievement: judges were no longer under the administrative control of the executive branch. Civil society rejoiced, seeing their years of work becoming fruitful.

Nearly two decades later, the judiciary remains functionally dependent on the executive. The executive still controls judicial appointments, postings, transfers, promotions, and the entire judicial budget.

Judges have "independence by permission" -- they can act freely only if they know where the invisible boundaries are. As one retired judge observed, it is "independence in form, not in freedom."

Worse still, in 2009, just two years after separation, the Mobile Court Act gave judicial powers back to executive magistrates, directly undermining the reform. The structure changed. The law changed. The behavior did not.

This is what happens when constitutional reform is imposed without genuine political will to change practice. The new system becomes a façade - better for headlines, worse for accountability, because it creates the illusion of reform while preserving the reality of control.

An upper chamber, new electoral arrangements, binding charters -- all of these suffer from the same vulnerability. Without political parties willing to practice democratic norms, without leaders committed to genuine accountability, structural reforms become new arenas for the old games.

They do not constrain authoritarian impulses; they provide new mechanisms to legitimize them.

That is why political parties need to be brought into the change not as unwilling participants but as co-creators of this change process, along with a citizenry who have the tools to keep them in check.

When Process Betrays Democracy

This referendum may follow formal procedure, but it violates the spirit of democratic consent. When voters are confused rather than informed, when multiple decisions are collapsed into one, when dissent is buried, and when citizens are told that only one answer leads to change, the process becomes fraudulent in substance, even if it appears lawful in form.

The failure lies not with voters, but with those designing and selling this referendum. A referendum that ordinary citizens cannot understand let alone explain has already failed its democratic test.

The choice before Bangladeshis is not between reform and stagnation. It is between accepting a flawed, bundled process that may deliver neither understanding nor meaningful change, or rejecting it in hope that genuine reform -- transparent, deliberative, and comprehensible -- can be pursued through more democratic means.

Symbolism without substance delivers headlines, not lasting change.