Pranab Chakma
The seventeenth-century English poet John Milton wrote in the fourth book of his celebrated epic Paradise Regained (1671): “The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.” Just as the morning sun foretells the nature of the day ahead, so too do a government’s earliest actions reveal the character of its rule. In light of the BNP government’s conduct since coming to power — led by Tarique Rahman through the thirteenth national parliamentary election held in February 2026, following the extraordinary mass uprising of July–August 2024 — Milton’s words feel strikingly apt.
Did the students and citizens who shed blood in the name of change only to find the party they helped bring to power rowing against that very tide? The administrative and political decisions of the past two months point uncomfortably in that direction.
During the eighteen months of the interim government’s tenure, 133 ordinances were promulgated with the aim of reforming the state’s institutional framework. Among the most significant were ordinances concerning judicial independence, human rights protection, the prevention of enforced disappearances, and anti-corruption measures. Yet almost immediately upon assuming office, the BNP government has cast the future of these reforms into doubt.
As many as 16 critical ordinances — including the Referendum Ordinance 2025, the National Human Rights Commission Ordinance 2025, the Enforced Disappearances Prevention and Remedy Ordinance, and an amendment to the Anti-Corruption Commission Act — lapsed automatically after 12 April, having not been tabled in parliament within the required timeframe.
This can hardly be attributed to administrative oversight; it bears all the hallmarks of a calculated political strategy. The intent to dismantle the ordinance establishing an independent secretariat for the Supreme Court, and to revert to the old, opaque system of judicial appointments, is unmistakable. With these ordinances now void, the largely ineffective Human Rights Commission Act of 2009 — a law that proved impotent throughout years of authoritarian rule — has been effectively restored.
BNP’s electoral slogan was “Bangladesh First.” Its nine core pledges and 51-point manifesto committed to building a just and humane Bangladesh. Yet since taking office, the party appears to have positioned itself against its own manifesto. BNP Secretary-General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir had publicly vowed to honour every electoral promise to the letter — but the reality on the ground tells a different story. The retreat from reform once in the seat of power is disturbingly reminiscent of the Awami League under Sheikh Hasina, where the consolidation of absolute control was always the overriding objective.
For the past decade and a half, BNP itself was among the gravest victims of enforced disappearances in Bangladesh. Yet today, in power, the party is showing little appetite for implementing the very ordinance designed to prevent such abuses. Its reported desire to exclude “detention” from the legal definition of enforced disappearance — justified in the name of national security — and to require prior government approval before any investigation into the security forces can proceed, mirrors precisely the arguments deployed during the Hasina era.
The same pattern is visible in the judiciary. The move to repeal the ordinance establishing an independent panel for the selection of judges represents a serious threat to judicial independence, echoing the very politicisation of the courts that became a hallmark of the previous government.
Law and order presents an equally troubling picture. The deaths of nearly fifty people in mob lynchings in the first three months of 2026 alone speak to a state failing in its most fundamental duty to its citizens. Rather than reforming the police, efforts to recast it as a partisan “nationalist police force” amount to nothing more than the same old political capture dressed in new clothing.
A glance at the situation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts reveals that the change of government has brought no change in fortune for the region’s people. As under the Awami League, the political problems of the Hill Tracts continue to be managed not through political dialogue but through military force and organised criminality. The government appears to have struck an arrangement with Santu Larma — retaining him as Chairman of the Regional Council, an unelected state position — while his armed cadres wage fratricidal violence on its behalf. On 17 April, Santu Larma’s armed cadres murdered Dharmashing Chakma, a central leader of the Democratic Youth Forum, in his own home in Kutukchhari, Rangamati. It is as though Santu Larma has been awarded a contract to sustain internecine conflict in exchange for keeping his official seat.
History is an unforgiving witness: in Bangladesh, whichever party comes to power with an overwhelming parliamentary majority eventually begins to regard itself as above the law. After the mass uprising of 1990, BNP itself strayed from the roadmap agreed upon by the three-party alliance. Is it now repeating the same mistake in the Bangladesh that emerged from the uprising of 2024?
The only way to honour the debt owed to the martyrs of the July Revolution was to seal off, once and for all, the path to authoritarianism through genuine state reform. The equivocation over the ordinances and the drive towards centralising power constitute a betrayal of that debt. There is still time for BNP to course-correct. If the party fails to return to the path of reform — if it does not honour the promises made to the people and the commitments enshrined in the July Charter — history will not forgive it. If the light of dawn carries the warning of a storm, one cannot reasonably hope for calm by nightfall. The mirror of history stands clear before BNP. If the party knowingly continues to follow in Sheikh Hasina’s footsteps, it ought to be able to perceive, however dimly, where that road must lead.
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