For thousands like 21-year-old Saiful Islam, the outcome of the July 2024 student-led uprising in Bangladesh that ousted Sheikh Hasina was not just the fall of an autocratic and repressive regime but also the possible beginning of a broader restructuring of the state. Now, as a new government led by Tarique Rahman of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) dilly-dallies over the country’s long-cherished democratic reforms, Islam feels betrayed.
“This government is once again moving towards authoritarian rule by failing to implement the referendum verdict,” Islam said as he took part in a protest in Dhaka in April. Bangladesh held a referendum alongside its parliamentary election in February, presenting the public with a choice on key constitutional reforms. Rahman and his party had campaigned to secure support for the referendum proposals. More than 60 percent of voters backed the reform package.
“We will implement the referendum verdict at any cost,” Islam added.
The reforms were first promised, and many initiated, by the interim government led by Muhammad Yunus that took over after Hasina’s government fell. After Hasina’s ouster, the Bangladesh public and emerging political class were determined to overhaul the country’s governance structures so that no one leader or party could completely capture public institutions as Hasina and her Awami League had done. The Yunus administration promised monumental reform, passing more than 100 orders, including measures on the prevention of enforced disappearances, the formation of an anti-corruption commission, the establishment of a separate secretariat for the judiciary and the introduction of referendums to understand the people’s will. In July 2025, the country’s major political parties, minus the now-banned Awami League, came to a broad agreement on sweeping structural, legal and institutional changes, gathered in a document called the July Charter.