As with the constitution, good principles can only help if properly applied in practice. In the long run, the verdict of history on the interim government will depend on the ability of its successors
For the Interim Government, this election will be how their legacy is viewed by posterity. Whatever they have achieved and whatever mistakes they have made, everything will be subsumed by this election. If they are able to preside over a good election and hand over power without incident to an elected government, then they will be judged a success.
Now, at any moment, a mob can be summoned and the state paralyzed. The potential that emerged after Hasina’s fall is now impossible. This country will become a playground for fallen Indians and Chinese.
That is the real horror. If one clearly innocent doctor required thirteen layers of influence to secure bail, how many other innocent people are still inside -- unseen, unheard, and unrescued?
It is no longer an abstract fight over who controls the political clock. It is a concrete, urgent battle for the very foundations of public order, institutional integrity, and rational discourse.
Hadi wanted elections. He believed in the electoral process. He believed in democracy. He was running for election in Dhaka-8. He believed in the slow, painstaking process of building a new Bangladesh and knew there could be no short-cuts.
The reality in Chittagong is: three days at the outer anchorage, indefinite waiting inside the port for a berth, one week to discharge using small lighter vessels, discharge stops if the sea is rough -- all added up, instead of 2 days, in some cases it is taking 25 days.
The King’s Party and the Queen’s party just perpetuate the cycle of dysfunction and corruption, while the people yearn for change. Into this vacuum step the Islamists. But the only change they can deliver will be to further divide us.
If the February 2026 election is to be festive, free and fair, we will need a campaign so that Bangladeshis believe that their votes will count and their voices will be heard.
By binding the concept of reform so tightly to the consensus commission's existence, and suggesting that the commission's end would spell the end of reform itself, we have propagated a dangerous fiction: that meaningful reform requires suspending normal democratic politics and governing through unelected technocrats.
How revolutionary aspiration transformed into an elite settlement
Call the vote. Step down from the balcony. And let an elected government answer, at last, to the only sovereign that matters. The antidote to our present malaise is not another announcement. It is an election.
It is all very well to chart out a pathway to reform, but it is in the implementation that the wheels hit the road, and it is here that the process lacks clarity and cohesion.
While no model for increasing women's political representation is perfect, the crux of the matter is that the political desire for a workable solution is what is absent. This is what must change if women are to experience the fruits of Bangladesh 2.0.
The choice lies with us -- the collective will of the people across all sections of society. The coming months, leading up to the election, will determine which road Bangladesh takes.
