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Chief justice Syed Refaat Ahmed on Saturday said that political and constitutional renegotiations might well produce a new social contract, even a new constitutional order.

Addressing the inaugural session of the Bay of Bengal Conversation 2025 as the chief guest at a city hotel, Justice Refaat said that the continuity of reform initiated after the July uprising was not guaranteed.

‘Permit me to speak candidly. The continuity of reforms is not guaranteed. The future Supreme Court administrations will inherit not only structures but landscapes, landscapes that may bear little resemblance to the present transitional moment,’ the Chief Justice told the conference.  

Justice Refaat said, ‘Political and constitutional renegotiations may well produce a new social contract, perhaps even a new constitutional order.’

‘In such a moment, the Judiciary will face its greatest test, how to navigate this larger restructuring without losing the animating spirit of constitutionalism. Vision, wisdom, and courage, these three qualities will determine whether the Judiciary remains relevant in a rapidly reconstituting nation,’ he said.

He said that the ‘July Revolution’ did not propose to overturn the constitution, it rather proposed to purify their engagement with it.

Non-government think-tank Centre for Governance Studies organised the event attended by around 1,000 participants, including politicians, researchers, diplomats, and journalists, from home and abroad with its president Zillur Rahman in the chair

Speaking at the inauguration of the fourth three-day event titled ‘Rivals, Ruptures, Realignments --Navigating Power and Purpose in  a Disordered World’, foreign affairs adviser Md Touhid Hossain said that Bangladesh would engage in an evolving international order maintaining its own national interest and self-respect. 

‘We will engage robustly, speak firmly when needed, and partner productively always with an eye on national interest and regional stability,’ he said

Mentioning the first priority in the shifting geometry of power, Touhid said that Bangladesh insists on its sovereignty and the right to pursue its national interest.

‘We will engage with major and middle powers alike, but their decisions will be guided by national interest, sovereign equality, and mutual respect,’ he said, adding that Bangladesh intended to be an important actor, not a passive corridor in the region.

Chief justice Syed Refaat said that within this theatre of global instability, the civic awakening of July 2024 stands out as a moment of rare clarity. ‘It compelled Bangladesh to revisit the very grammar of its constitutional life,’ he said.

‘We gather today at a moment when the global order is being reshaped with a velocity and unpredictability rarely witnessed in recent decades. Across continents, traditional alliances are shifting, geopolitical geometries are being recalculated, and spheres of influence are redrawn with pragmatic, interest-driven precision,’ he said.

He said that over the past year, they had sought to activate this jurisprudence in earnest introducing structural reforms in the service, regularising career pathways, and laying the foundations for the Supreme Court Secretariat Ordinance.

‘These measures are not mere bureaucratic reconfigurations, they are constitutional correctives intended to restore balance, independence, and administrative discipline,’ he said.

The reform, said the chief justice, cannot survive on architecture alone. ‘It survives on ownership, ownership by those who must live under its canopy and breathe within its corridors,’ he added. 

CGS executive director Parvez Karim Abbasi also spoke at the inaugural session of the geopolitical conference joined by 200 speakers from 85 countries.

Responding to a question at the plenary session on ‘Fractured Orders, Fluid Loyalties: Power Politics in the Post-Alignment Age’, Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies president ANM Muniruzzaman commented on Sheikh Hasina’s extradition .

Muniruzzaman said that India should respect Bangladesh’s legal system and return ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina, hiding in India and recently sentenced to death by the International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka for atrocities during the July Mass uprising that led to the fall of her regime on August 5, 2024.