Prof Riaz is right that elections alone cannot sustain democracy. The further point is that institutions cannot remain independent if parties refuse to accept limits on their own power. Bangladesh will break its political cycle when we agree that winning power does not confer ownership of the state.
Is tinkering with the formal rules of the game the triumph of hope over experience (this time politics will be different)? Or a more technocratic faith in the power of institutional architecture to push back against the potent political imperatives of rents and control (we can design our way to democracy)? Either way, fixing the rules seems a misplaced focus when history has shown that the amassing of political power rapidly renders such niceties ornamental.
