It didn’t take long for the illusion to collapse.

In fact, even before the election schedule was drafted, a certain class of civic-minded citizens and activists—those who genuinely wish to see the country prosper and who, until recently, insisted that reforms could and should be enacted through an elected government—have now confronted a sobering reality.

Persuading political parties to act against their entrenched self-interest in favor of the national good is not just difficult….it borders on the impossible.

The naïveté was understandable, perhaps even admirable. These reformists put their faith in ballots, in parliamentary supermajorities.

Also, quite regrettably, in the idea that an overwhelming public mandate could compel responsible governance. Yet even after sending elected leaders into parliament with a two-thirds majority—possibly more, depending on how one interprets the legitimacy of the 2008 election—the country saw no meaningful reform agenda materialize.

Instead, that electoral dominance, achieved with roughly 40 percent of the vote, became a blank check for those in power to bend state mechanisms to partisan ends.

What was framed as a political mandate became, in practice, a mandate for impunity.

Nowhere was this more visibly demonstrated than during Hasina’s era, when the swollen majority was used to undermine it systematically.

State institutions were reduced to partisan appendages and the banking and economic systems were skewed to serve politically connected networks.

And the delicate lattice of social harmony—once Bangladesh’s quiet strength—was fractured by politicized patronage and tribalist division.

The government’s core operating principle became clear: public interest was rhetorical, private interest was real.

A true reality check

Given this track record, it is imperative to interrogate the cynical politics of invoking the “people’s mandate” as a shield against reform.

Those now blocking structural changes in the name of democratic legitimacy are, in many cases, the very actors who squandered their mandate when they possessed it.

This leaves us with a hard—but necessary—reckoning.

For those aspiring to join a future “civil society vanguard” and to serve as enlightened custodians of national progress, the lesson is unmistakable: scale back the fantasies.

The notion that any group—political or civilian—will descend upon the state apparatus like righteous repairmen and “fix” the country through sheer moral energy is a seductive but misguided myth.

Reform is essentially a slow, disciplined process grounded in constraints, institutional safeguards, and accountability—not in messianic intent.

Perhaps it is time to abandon the savior complex, to retire the idea that one enlightened class can rescue a nation from its own entrenched dysfunction. What Bangladesh needs is not another chorus of self-anointed guardians, nor a new generation of reformist romantics.

It needs systems that outlast political personalities and political moods—and a citizenry that demands reforms not as an act of benevolence from rulers, but as a structural requirement for governance itself.

And yet, had the country possessed a genuine statesman—a figure with vision, a sense of historical responsibility—the post-revolution interim government could have been a rare and transformative opportunity.

The structural reforms that conventional politics rendered untenable, the interests that party actors would never willingly curtail, the institutional resets that democratic theatrics always defer—these could have been enacted swiftly and decisively.

But it would require a leader less concerned with legacy statues and party loyalty than with rebuilding a national framework for the common good. Such leaders, we must admit, are almost nonexistent in our political landscape.

Uncomfortable realization

This sparks an uncomfortable question: is the deficiency limited to personalities, or are we confronting a deeper systemic failure—one baked into our administrative culture, one that quietly rewards the wrong kind of political behavior?

In many functioning democracies, political success is tied to demonstrable competence—the ability to craft policy, to execute reform, to improve the national condition.

Even flawed policies in such countries are at least tethered to an attempt at public problem-solving, with unintended consequences emerging as externalities rather than intentions.

Here, the logic is inverted. Political success requires maintaining a vast patronage grid: a network of loyalty brokers, intermediaries, local fixers, and distribution pipelines of favors, contracts, and allocations.

Policy itself—the thing that elsewhere is central to political legitimacy—becomes a kind of incidental residue, an accidental byproduct of a system oriented primarily around ensuring that everyone gets their slice.

Because governance is about transactional equilibrium.

This is why even well-intended administrative periods, including an interim government with a fleeting freedom from partisan compulsions, risk squandering their moment.

In the absence of a leader who can detach governing from the political spoils system, reform remains aspirational at best and cosmetic at worst.

The tragedy is not only that transformative leadership is missing—it’s that the system has been engineered to make such leadership unwelcome and ultimately unviable.

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Nayel Rahman is a political analyst