A mandate for reform is not a blank cheque

Bangladesh may be standing at a generational moment of constitutional possibility. Few would deny that the country’s long history of executive dominance, institutional capture, and weak accountability demands serious reform. On that much, a recent column in this newspaper by Justice M. A. Matin, Dr Mirza M. Hassan, Dr Sharif Bhuiyan, and Dr Asif M. Shahan, published on March 16, 2026, is right. If handled well, this moment could correct structural failures that have damaged democratic life for decades and restore trust in state institutions.

But because the stakes are so high, the arguments used to justify reform matter as much as reform itself. A persuasive diagnosis of political decay does not automatically produce a sound constitutional argument. This is where the column’s central claim requires closer scrutiny.

The authors’ basic position is clear: the February 12 referendum authorised the implementation of the July National Charter through a Constitution Reform Assembly (CRA), and objections to that path amount to disregard for the people’s will. Though a powerful political claim, it overreads what the referendum actually authorised.

The central question is not whether the referendum created a mandate. It plainly did. The real question is: what was the scope of that mandate? A democratic mandate, however strong, is not self-interpreting. It must be read in light of the procedure through which it was created, the question put to voters, and the institutional limits within which that authority can be exercised.

The argument of Matin et al. rests on a foundational claim: that the fall of the Sheikh Hasina regime rendered the constitution inoperative and returned sovereignty directly to the people. This view echoes a Lockean doctrine: that when a government betrays public trust, the people may alter or abolish it. But the authors blur a critical distinction between the loss of political legitimacy and the collapse of a constitutional order. Governments can lose moral authority without the constitution itself ceasing to exist or the institutional framework through which authority operates dissolving.

That distinction matters because the rest of their argument depends on it. If the Constitution of Bangladesh truly collapsed, one might plausibly speak of a founding moment in which constituent power returned directly to the people. But that is not what happened. The state did not dissolve. The constitution was not replaced. The interim government was formed through existing institutional channels and later validated within the constitutional framework. These features are difficult to reconcile with the claim that the constitutional order itself had ceased.

At this point, some describe the events of August 5, 2024, as a revolution to ground a claim of constituent power. I do not agree. A revolution strong enough to found a new constitutional order normally produces a visible reorientation of the state apparatus towards the new sovereign authority. That did not occur. What took place was a profound political rupture, but not an unambiguous constitutional refounding. The language of constituent power, therefore, cannot simply be assumed.

This reveals a further problem: the referendum is being treated as a blank cheque for institutional redesign. The 2026 referendum was a powerful act of authorisation, but not a constitution-founding moment. It operated through a pre-defined framework. Constitution-founding acts replace prior orders; they do not operate through them. An act that presupposes an existing structure cannot be treated as having silently transcended it.

This leads to a derivative authority problem. When authority is exercised through a specified framework, it becomes structured and limited by that framework. Once authority is channelled through defined procedures, it is no longer open-ended but conditioned by the terms under which it was granted. A structured ratification cannot later be reinterpreted as an unconstrained mandate.

The issue of scope follows naturally. A democratic mandate binds only to the extent that it is specific. The referendum bundled together large institutional questions. It did not separately ask voters whether they approved every institutional implication later derived from that endorsement, most notably, the creation of a CRA operating alongside parliament.

This matters more than some critics admit. To raise this concern is not to question the intelligence of voters. It is not “elitist” to insist on a basic democratic principle: consent must track the question asked. The more questions are bundled, the weaker the claim that any specific institutional mechanism has been distinctly authorised.

That is why mandate specificity matters. Package endorsement is not component authorisation. This point is reinforced by a further difficulty: the wording of the referendum question itself admits of more than one plausible reading. The ballot asks voters whether they approve the implementation order and the charter in relation to the listed reform proposals. But the structure allows that approval to be read in two ways, either as extending to the broader implementation framework or as confined to the reform proposals themselves.

This is not a merely technical issue. It bears directly on the scope of the mandate. If the ballot does not clearly distinguish between approval of reforms and approval of the mechanisms to implement them, the mandate cannot be treated as determinate. A single vote may be read as authorising both, or only one. That ambiguity cannot be resolved after the fact, nor through interpretation alone.

Ratification confirms a document as presented; it does not erase internal dissents or settle every ambiguity. Where the question admits of multiple reasonable readings, the mandate cannot be treated as precise. It must be interpreted with restraint. Ambiguity in the question cannot produce certainty in the authority claimed from it.

These two features, the procedural boundedness of the referendum and the ambiguity of its wording, reinforce rather than contradict each other, and together limit the authority that can be claimed from it.

This conclusion points to a more general principle. In a constitutional democracy, the people are supreme in source, but that supremacy is not self-executing. Matin et al. invoke Article 7, emphasising that all powers belong to the people. But Article 7 also requires that those powers be exercised under, and by the authority of, the constitution. Invoking “the people” while bypassing these procedures weakens, rather than strengthens, democratic legitimacy.

The authors also argue that reform through parliament may not survive judicial scrutiny because of the basic structure doctrine. This is not trivial. Article 142 suggests broad amendment power, but judicial interpretation has imposed limits. But recognising that limitation does not resolve the institutional question; it only shifts it. The move from constrained amendment to a CRA requires further justification. One must show that constituent authority was clearly exercised through the referendum in a way that authorises the specific mechanism proposed.

As the preceding analysis suggests, the referendum did not unambiguously present voters with a discrete choice to constitute a separate body exercising founding authority, nor did it clearly confer such authority on the proposed assembly. A general expression of approval cannot perform that institutional work. The deeper question, then, is unavoidable: who authorised the CRA, and through what mechanism? A limitation on one institution does not automatically confer legitimacy on another. Without that clarification, the problem is not resolved but displaced.

It is also worth noting that the interim government that organised the election did not rely solely on assertion. Its legitimacy was anchored, at least formally, in the constitution, as the president sought the advice of the Appellate Division under Article 106, reflecting an attempt to situate the political transition within a recognisable constitutional framework.

None of this denies the need for reform. Bangladesh requires stronger constraints on executive power, but that does not relieve reformers of the burden of constitutional precision. The people spoke on February 12. The question is not whether their voice matters, but whether it will be interpreted with discipline. A mandate for reform is not a blank cheque. Precisely because this is a rare constitutional opportunity, it must not be converted into a licence for unlimited interpretation.

Dr Kazi A S M Nurul Huda is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Dhaka and Zuzana Simoniova Cmelikova Visiting International Scholar in Leadership and Ethics at the University of Richmond’s Jepson School of Leadership Studies.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

Follow The Daily Star Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions, commentaries, and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see our guidelines for submission.