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I WAS struck, perhaps not entirely surprised though, when Professor Muhammad Yunus recently noted that only one political party is still actively calling for elections in December. It was a sobering reminder of the dismal state of political pluralism in Bangladesh, a country where democratic aspirations have too often been sacrificed at the altar of elite consensus or populist consolidation. In the aftermath of a series of bloody and disorienting months, the interim government has revealed itself not as a transitional force for healing, but rather as another iteration of a familiar Bangladeshi tragedy: well-meaning rhetoric cloaking a fundamentally compromised reality.

This follow-up article offers an anatomical diagnosis of the underlying dysfunctions hinted at in Mostofa Nazmul Mansur’s original piece, ‘Interim government: major blunders and path forward’ (¶¶Òõ¾«Æ·, May 25, 2025). While Mansur identified the major missteps, this piece seeks to dissect the deeper systemic symptoms behind those blunders — tracing the anatomy of a political order in paralysis, and considering what it will take to chart a genuine path towards democratic renewal.

This is a government born not of reform but of resignation — a caretaker regime fashioned out of old parts, operating under the illusion that a system long corroded by partisanship, patronage and inertia could somehow renew itself from within. What we are witnessing is not democratic innovation but institutional stagnation, a kind of procedural mimicry of legitimacy without its core substance. From the co-optation of student voices — once vital agents of change, now reduced to pawns in an increasingly authoritarian script — to the unanswered horrors of state violence in July, each chapter in this unfolding crisis signals the erosion of public faith in governance.

This is not simply a moment of mismanagement; it is a crisis of imagination and credibility. The five cardinal mistakes that have brought us here — failures of transparency, of inclusion, of justice, of vision, and of leadership — have not only deepened the fractures within Bangladeshi society, but have also raised a more fundamental question: can the country chart a path forward that is not just a repetition of its tragic past?

Bangladesh does not lack for resilience. What it lacks is a political architecture capable of converting that resilience into renewal — something more than temporary fixes or technocratic platitudes. It is time, urgently, to think beyond personalities and parties, and towards the kind of civic institutions, norms and national narratives that can truly anchor a democratic future.

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Visionless reform

REFORM is not an accident of history. It is the result of political will, strategic clarity and institutional coherence. Effective reform requires more than good intentions; it demands a realistic assessment of the political landscape, an understanding of trade-offs and a clear sense of priorities. Justice and good governance don’t materialise on their own — they are built, often painstakingly, through deliberate planning and a commitment to hard choices.

What we have seen in Bangladesh instead is a familiar pattern: commissions formed with great fanfare, initiatives announced with rhetorical flourish, and then an almost immediate slide into bureaucratic stasis. The cycle is all too predictable — performance without substance, activity without impact.

Consider the development model currently being pursued. Projects financed by debt may generate short-term growth indicators, but without a corresponding investment in institutional capacity, that debt becomes unsustainable. Similarly, calls for a leaner state apparatus under the banner of ‘empowerment’ tend to expand the informal sector — leaving critical labour protections unenforced and vulnerable populations more exposed. Even anti-corruption drives, if not carefully calibrated, can paralyse decision-making in a system where informal payments have long substituted for procedural efficiency. In such environments, civil servants know how to outlast reformers. They wait.

The essence of reform lies in managing these contradictions with a coherent framework. Trade-offs are inevitable — but they must be made with purpose and political resolve. Absent that, reform devolves into a series of ad hoc decisions, reactive rather than strategic.

Unfortunately, Yunus’s administration has come to reflect this drift. What began as a technocratic initiative to chart a new direction became bogged down by internal inconsistencies. A six-member reform committee — composed of individuals from vastly different sectors and political orientations — was tasked with creating consensus where none naturally existed. The result, perhaps inevitably, was confusion rather than clarity. One glaring example: the Women’s Commission advocated for the addition of 100 parliamentary seats, while the Election Commission proposed reallocating those same seats within the current 300. Faced with irreconcilable mandates, the government did what most bureaucracies under strain do: it stalled. And then, predictably, it attributed the failure to a lack of consensus.

This is not an indictment of ambition, but of process. Vision without structure becomes noise. Reform requires not only intent but integration — clear priorities, policy alignment, and above all, the political discipline to implement and adjust as realities evolve.

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Squandering people’s signal

THE violent unrest of July and August 2024 was not just another episode in the long and often tragic history of political protest in South Asia. It was something deeper — a rupture in the social contract. To interpret it merely as an emotional spasm or spontaneous chaos is to ignore the tectonic forces at play. What unfolded was a visceral, almost primal, challenge to a system that had ceased to command legitimacy in the eyes of its people. The near-total destruction of police infrastructure — affecting nearly 80 per cent of stations — was less an act of senseless destruction and more a symbolic dismantling of an institution that had come to represent, not public order, but partisan control.

In historical terms, moments like this function as societal referenda. They are not conducted in polling booths but in the streets, in fire, in fury. And the question posed was clear: can a state structure — rooted in decades of coercion, patronage and impunity — survive in a society that has outgrown it?

The response of the interim government to this existential question reveals much about the inertia of institutions and the psychology of power. Instead of reimagining the machinery of governance, the administration has defaulted to the path of least resistance — restoration over transformation. The very police force that became the symbol of systemic decay has been quietly reinstated. But it doesn’t stop there. The bureaucracy that enabled arbitrary governance, and the judiciary that often looked away — or worse, legitimised excesses — remain untouched. Credible reports suggest that mamla banijya (case-trading) continues unabated, while the broader culture of unaccountable force persists. In essence, the software of repression has been rebooted — across the police, bureaucracy and judiciary — without even bothering to update the code.

Perhaps most strikingly, the compliance bureaucracies — the very machinery that underpinned the former regime’s architecture of control — remain fully operational. The fiefdoms created through procurement cartels, rent-seeking syndicates and administrative gatekeeping have not been dismantled. They have simply been inherited. Despite the new names on the placards, the system functions with the same logic and incentives. The reformers, many of whom arrived with the promise of moral clarity, now appear embedded within the very networks they claimed to challenge. Several advisers, insulated from accountability, are reportedly enjoying the spoils of this continuity — entrenched within the very cartelised governance they were meant to dismantle.

The silence around the Police Reform Commission is emblematic of this betrayal. Tasked with articulating a vision for structural change, its report remains unpublished — perhaps indefinitely shelved. There have been no all-party debates, no public dialogues, no institutional reckoning. And in this silence, we can hear the echo of an ancient pattern: elites surviving collapse not by reforming, but by waiting out the storm and resuming business as usual.

If we take history seriously — as we must — we know that revolutions don’t always fail when they are crushed. Sometimes they fail when their demands are absorbed, diluted and repackaged by those in power. What is unfolding now is not merely a missed opportunity. It is a textbook case in how systems of control perpetuate themselves, cloaked in the language of transition, while the deeper structures remain untouched.

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Technocrats and illusion

WE ARE consistently presented with the narrative of a government guided by ‘experts.’ Yet, this purported expertise has demonstrably failed to translate into a coherent action plan, a prioritised strategy, or even a basic costing for implementation. My own observations from within government ministries, consulting on reforms often funded by international donors, reveal a consistent pattern: meticulously crafted reports, replete with viable recommendations, routinely accumulate dust in bureaucratic archives. The deficiency is not intellectual; it is fundamentally one of political resolve.

Reform, in its practical manifestation, is not about conceptual novelty. It is about the operationalisation of established knowledge. This process inherently commences with dedicated budgetary allocation. The stark reality of the 2025-26 national budget, however, reveals a zero allocation for reform implementation. This raises a critical question regarding the very nature of governance: how can an unelected administration purport to fundamentally alter a system when it demonstrably fails to commit the requisite financial resources?

The implication of this fiscal indifference is profound. It suggests that genuine structural reform was never the primary objective. Instead, the strategy appears to be one of pacification — a managerial tactic to neutralise dissent and prolong the operational lifespan of existing elite configurations. This is achieved through the deployment of a rebranded narrative of ‘good governance,’ which, in this context, serves not as a blueprint for change, but as an elaborate mechanism for depoliticising substantive challenges and maintaining the prevailing order.

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Generation lied to

RECENT analyses by respected economists and political observers increasingly reflect a deep-seated scepticism about the interim government’s sincerity regarding institutional reform. Their conclusions align with widespread public perception: that the administration’s gestures towards change are largely symbolic — an exercise in optics rather than a demonstration of authentic political resolve.

One of the most glaring indicators of this dissonance between rhetoric and reality is the government’s continued refusal to release a full, verified list of those killed during the July-August 2024 crackdown. The absence of this basic act of public accountability is especially troubling given the stark disparity between international and domestic casualty estimates. While United Nations sources report approximately 1,400 deaths, official figures from Dhaka acknowledge only 850. Yet, despite the scale of these losses, there has been no declaration of national mourning, no establishment of an independent commission of inquiry, and no credible framework for victim compensation.

Such omissions are not bureaucratic oversights — they are deliberate political choices. The refusal to confront the human cost of state violence sends a clear message: that reconciliation and truth are not priorities in this transition.

Further exacerbating this crisis is the treatment of the wounded — thousands of citizens who stood at the frontline against autocratic excesses. Reports suggest many of these individuals continue to suffer without access to proper medical treatment, legal representation or even basic psychological support. These are not abstract governance failures; they are daily lived realities for a segment of the population whose sacrifice ostensibly made the current political reset possible.

What emerges from this pattern is more than a critique of policy — it is a diagnosis of moral abdication. When a transitional authority, claiming legitimacy on the basis of correcting past abuses, fails to acknowledge its own victims, it undermines the very foundation upon which its authority rests. This is not merely a lapse in leadership; it signals a deeper erosion of ethical responsibility at the heart of the state apparatus.

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Continuity of complicity

FAR from ushering in a new political order, the interim government has become the most recent custodian of Bangladesh’s entrenched system of elite preservation. What was promised as a corrective moment has turned into a calibrated exercise in continuity. The very individuals who once greased the machinery of the Awami League’s dominance have been seamlessly repurposed as supposed moral stewards of this ‘new’ administration. This is no accident. It is a deliberate strategy of co-option dressed in the language of reform.

We are now witnessing the quiet re-emergence of those who enabled judicial manipulations to exonerate controversial figures, now inexplicably rehabilitated into influential roles. Meanwhile, the vast fortunes accumulated by figures remain untouched — indeed, protected. Even more jarring is the duplicity of those who publicly invoke the ideals of Mujibism while privately brokering power under the banner of national ‘consensus.’

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Not transformation but tactical recycling

WHERE is the institutional accountability for the District Commissioners and Superintendents of Police who presided over the sham elections of 2014, 2018, and 2024? Why are there no legal proceedings against members of the Sheikh family still ensconced in privilege, despite credible allegations of embezzlement and abuse of power? How does a banned political actor quietly assume an administrative post in a strategically sensitive region? These are not isolated lapses — they are symptoms of a deeply calculated betrayal.

We are repeatedly told that raising such concerns ‘undermines’ the advisory process. But the true subversion lies in the silence that follows every unanswered question, every unpunished crime.

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Politics of return, not reform

IN BANGLADESH, the word reform has long carried the weight of subversion. It is not simply a policy aspiration but a rupture — an existential threat to the tight weave of class interests, partisan patronage and institutional inertia that define our governing order. What confronts us today is not a government navigating the perilous waters of democratic transition. It is a transactional regime — meticulously constructed to secure elite continuity under the guise of change.

This is not paralysis born of indecision. It is the conscious freezing of political time — a holding pattern designed to exhaust popular momentum, to hollow out the vocabulary of reform while preserving every power network that once enabled repression. The interim government was handed a rare moment — a volatile, painful and potentially generative rupture in the old order. But rather than seize it, it has chosen to pacify it. And it has done so by building consensus not with the public who bore the brunt of tyranny, but with the very architects of that tyranny.

We must be brutally honest: this was never about transformation. It was always about restoration.

The cautionary tale being written today is one that future generations may read with bitterness: that when history opened its gates, the interim stewards chose compromise over courage, stability over justice, comfort over conviction. And yet, it is not too late to alter that script. The first step is to reject the cultivated silence — to interrogate the imposed narratives, to dismantle the cosmetic reforms, to ask, loudly and unrelentingly, the questions this government would rather leave unanswered.

As Richard Feynman once warned, ‘If a fact contradicts authority, the fact wins.’ Our duty now is not to conform, but to confront. To stay defiantly curious in the face of coercive consensus. Because while conformity might offer protection, only inquiry — driven by both reason and moral clarity — can lead us forward.

For Bangladesh, this moment demands more than political commentary. It demands ethical reckoning. And in that reckoning, we must refuse to let betrayal pass as reform. Let the world call this a transition. We, who remember, must call it by its rightful name: a return.

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Abdul Monaiem Kudrot Ullah, a retired captain of the Bangladesh navy, is an informed voice on institutional reform, geo-strategy, strategic governance, and supply chain management.