Alongside final week’s parliamentary election in Bangladesh, voters additionally solid their ballots in a nationwide referendum on vital constitutional reforms proposed for the nation following the July 2024 rebellion and ousting of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The July Nationwide Constitution, which most political events signed final yr, was authorised by 60.26 percent of voters.
However that vote has now uncovered a schism between the victorious Bangladesh Nationalist Occasion (BNP), led by Tarique Rahman, and the opposition, led by Jamaat-e-Islami.
On Tuesday, newly elected BNP members of parliament refused to take an oath as members of a brand new Structure Reform Council, throwing the way forward for reforms into doubt.
We break down what the nationwide referendum in Bangladesh was all about, why the nation is split on it and what occurs subsequent.
What’s the context?
In July 2024, students in Bangladesh started protesting in opposition to a traditional job quota system, which reserved a major share of prized authorities jobs for descendants of Bangladesh’s freedom fighters of 1971, now extensively considered the political elite.
Hasina ordered a brutal crackdown because the protests escalated. Almost 1,400 folks have been killed, and greater than 20,000 have been wounded, in response to the nation’s Worldwide Crimes Tribunal (ICT), which later discovered Hasina responsible of crimes against humanity and sentenced her to demise. She is presently in exile in India, the place she fled after her ouster.
After Hasina went into exile, her Awami League social gathering, which had been in energy for 15 years beneath her management, was additionally banned from all political actions. The most recent election was the primary because the rebellion.
What’s the July Constitution?
After Hasina was ousted, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus took over because the nation’s interim chief of a caretaker authorities in August 2024.
The July National Charter 2025 was drafted by the caretaker authorities, outlining a roadmap for constitutional amendments, authorized modifications and the enactment of recent legal guidelines.
It accommodates greater than 80 proposals to overtake Bangladesh’s system of governance, with key reforms being “growing girls’s political illustration, imposing prime ministerial time period limits, enhancing presidential powers, increasing basic rights, and defending judicial independence”, in response to the Worldwide Institute for Democracy and Electoral Help (IDEA).
The constitution additionally recommends making a 100-member higher chamber alongside Bangladesh’s present single parliamentary physique, the 350-member Jatiya Sangsad.
The BNP was sceptical in regards to the July Nationwide Constitution referendum for months in the course of the transitional authorities, at instances signalling a “no”, till social gathering chief Tarique Rahman publicly endorsed a “sure” vote on January 30 and the BNP mentioned it might undertake the constitution if authorised within the referendum.
Specifically, analysts say, the BNP appeared against proposals to make use of proportional illustration to fill the higher home, which, it has argued, might dilute massive parliamentary majorities beneath the present electoral system.
Now that the constitution has been authorised, the brand new MPs should arrange the Structure Reform Council to enact the constitutional amendments within the constitution. The implementation course of is required to be accomplished inside 180 days of forming the council.
Has the referendum prompted division in Bangladesh?
On Tuesday, newly elected members of parliament have been sworn in.
They have been requested to take two oaths. The primary was the usual pledge to uphold the Structure of Bangladesh. The second certain them to respect and implement the July Nationwide Constitution 2025.
However the newly elected MPs from the BNP didn’t take the second oath, prompting criticism from members of Jamaat and its ally, the Nationwide Citizen Occasion (NCP), a celebration fashioned by college students who led the protests in opposition to Hasina in 2024.
Beneath an implementation order that units out how the July Nationwide Constitution will likely be become legislation, the Constitutional Reform Council is to be composed of MPs who, on the similar ceremony, additionally take an oath as council members. This technically means solely the Jamaat, the NCP and a small variety of others who took the second oath are presently eligible to take a seat on the Council.
As a result of greater than two-thirds of the MPs didn’t take the second oath, the Council has not but been constituted. It’s unclear what is going to occur subsequent concerning the formation of the council.
What’s the important sticking level for the BNP?
Salahuddin Ahmed, a BNP standing committee member and MP, instructed native media after the ceremony that BNP lawmakers had refused to take the Constitution oath as a result of, of their view, the Structure Reform Council, which will likely be charged with enacting the reforms, has not but been authorised by parliament.
“None of us have been elected because the members of this ‘Structure Reform Council’. This council will not be even part of the structure but. It is going to be thought-about professional solely when it’s authorised by the elected parliament,” Ahmed mentioned, in response to native media studies.
On Tuesday, nonetheless, he reaffirmed the BNP’s promise to enact the reforms: “We’re dedicated and pledged to implement the July Nationwide Constitution precisely because it was signed as a doc of political consensus.”
The principle concern the BNP is known to have in regards to the reforms pertains to the formation of a second, 100-member higher chamber of parliament.
“Main events seem to agree on nearly all of the core referendum points. Nevertheless, disagreements stay concerning particular particulars, significantly in regard to the formation of the proposed Higher Home,” Asif Nazrul, a legislation professor at Dhaka College, instructed Al Jazeera earlier.
Bangladesh presently conducts all elections utilizing the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system. Every voter picks one candidate, and whoever will get probably the most votes in a seat wins it.
This may create a big hole between a celebration’s general vote share and its precise share of seats. Theoretically, one social gathering might win 51 p.c of the vote in each seat, whereas one other might win 49 p.c in each seat. The primary social gathering would obtain one hundred pc of the seats, nonetheless.
Any social gathering that wins at the least 151 of the 300 seats can type a authorities alone, whereas the runner-up in seat rely turns into the official opposition.
In final week’s election, the BNP-led alliance gained 212 seats, adopted by 77 for the Jamaat-led alliance, out of the 297 parliamentary seats for which ends have been introduced.
The BNP needs to retain the system of FPTP, however the July Constitution recommends that the higher home be full of representatives elected in response to the proportional illustration electoral system, which might give events a share of seats extra in step with their share of general votes.
Forming the higher home in step with the FPTP system, against this, would put the BNP as a result of massive proportion of seats it gained in parliament.
“The BNP favours forming it [the upper house] in proportion to parliamentary seats, whereas Jamaat and the NCP want a system of proportional illustration. Resolving this dispute stays a key problem,” Nazrul mentioned.
