Citizens have already answered the ‘amendment or reform’ question

In his column published on July 24, titled “July charter implementation: Growing distance between BNP and the opposition is worrisome,” The Daily Star’s Editor Mahfuz Anam voiced a concern every democrat shares: that the hard-won consensus of our post-uprising transition is fraying. He is right to worry. But his prescription—for the opposition to join the government’s special committee on constitutional amendment and hold its objections in reserve—rests on a premise I must respectfully contest: that the choice between “amendment” and “reform” remains open for negotiation. It does not. The people closed that question on February 12, 2026.

Recall what was actually put to them. The July National Charter was no party manifesto; it emerged from 11 reform commissions and months of dialogue with about 30 parties, and on October 17, 2025, it was signed by 24 of them, including the party now in government. Then the President’s July National Charter (Constitutional Reform) Implementation Order, issued on November 13, 2025, set out the mechanism in black and white: a referendum alongside the general election and, upon a “Yes” verdict, a Constitution Reform Council comprising all elected Members of Parliament to complete the reforms within 180 working days. Not one party formally objected to that modality before the vote. On February 12, with a 60.19 percent turnout, 61.63 percent voted yes. That was not an endorsement of a vague sentiment. It was a vote for a specified mechanism.

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Mr Anam has asked, reasonably enough: “Doesn’t amending the constitution also amount to reforming it?” In everyday speech, perhaps. In constitutional law, no. Parliament’s amending power is not plenary; it is bounded by the basic structure doctrine that the Supreme Court has affirmed repeatedly (the Fifth Amendment fell on precisely that ground). Reforms of the depth that the July charter contemplates touch the fundamental architecture of the state, which only a constituent process, deriving authority directly from the people, can lawfully reach. That is why the implementation order conferred a dual mandate on every elected representative: legislator and constituent member at once. Changes of this scale pushed through a committee-and-majority route would be legally fragile—a recipe for the very instability that Mr Anam fears.

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July charter implementation: Growing distance between BNP and the opposition is worrisome

As for his counsel to join the special committee now and withdraw later if dissatisfied: participation is not costless observation. To sit on the committee is to validate a parallel mechanism that supplants the body that the majority of voters mandated. One cannot legitimise a bypass and reserve the right to protest it. And consider the arithmetic: had the Constitution Reform Council been constituted, every member of this parliament—from the treasury and opposition benches alike—would sit in it as of right. It is the hand-picked committee, not the council, that narrows their participation.

The committee also rests on a self-defeating premise. The government brands the implementation order void ab initio. Yet this very parliament, and the governing majority within it, exists by virtue of the election held under that order, its sole legal basis. The order cannot be valid for electing a parliament and void for reforming a constitution. The High Court Division has issued a rule only on the pending challenges, granting no stay; the presumption of constitutional validity applies, and the order binds the government, parliament, and opposition alike. The Appellate Division’s verdict of July 9, restoring the caretaker system and the referendum provision, cleared—not blocked—the mandated path.

Mr Anam’s criticism of the referendum’s design—that too many questions were “clustered” into one vote—was a fair debate to have had before February 12. No political party raised it then. A sovereign verdict cannot be discounted retrospectively because its consequences prove inconvenient. If that turnout and margin do not constitute a mandate, no referendum in our history ever has.

Finally, the charge of “bellicosity.” What the Leader of the Opposition has said is that the July charter must be implemented, and it is a position every signatory party once professed. Fidelity to a mandate is not “intransigence.” The gravest threat to stability is not an opposition insisting on the rule of law; it is the precedent now being set—with a large section of MPs refusing the Reform Council oath, and reform ordinances on human rights, enforced disappearance, and judicial independence repealed by voice vote in under two weeks, without a single public hearing—that solemn national compacts, endorsed by direct vote, may be shed by whoever wins the next election.

The door to collaboration remains open, and it swings on the hinge that the people themselves have built. Constitute the Reform Council. Let every MP take the seat the voters assigned them. Debate every clause of the charter, including the nine on which the governing party had recorded dissent, and finish the process within the 180 working days that the order prescribes. That is collaboration anchored in a mandate. The only distance worth closing is the one between the people’s verdict and its implementation.

(The Daily Star welcomes further constructive discussion on the questions of constitutional reform.)

Barrister Mir Ahmad Bin Quasem (Arman) is a Member of Parliament for Dhaka-14 and Adviser on Foreign Affairs to the Leader of the Opposition, 13th Bangladesh Parliament.

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

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