BNP supporters were quick to declare the recent meeting between Tarique Rahman and Dr. Muhammad Yunus, along with their joint statement, a political victory. While it might hold symbolic weight, it's crucial to understand this isn't a true victory—at least, not yet.

Yes, the initial announcement of an April election was shortsighted at best. Pushing it to February, ahead of Ramadan, makes far more sense–practically, politically, and logistically.

Holding an election right after the holy month, under intense daytime heat, with exhausted election workers, would have been nothing short of chaos. After sundown, the nation turns to iftar and prayer. Campaigning would have been stifled during the Ramadan. Voter engagement? Severely compromised.

But even this February date comes with a loaded asterisk: “subject to reforms.” The word sounds promising, even virtuous. But buried in it is the real fight.

The actual victory–if it is to come–lies in whether those reforms materialize meaningfully. If we can secure even a few foundational changes–electoral transparency, judicial independence, accountability for abuses–then yes, that would mark a turning point.

And let’s be honest: a democratic win for Bangladesh would, inevitably, be a win for BNP–not in the partisan sense, but in the sense that BNP’s struggle has long mirrored the public’s yearning for enfranchisement.

When the people win, so does the political force that has stood beside them.

I write this not as a political observer but rather as a physician–someone accustomed to observing suffering, slow healing, and the long, painful arc of recovery.

Acute pneumonia doesn’t come with a gentle warning. One day it’s a cough and fever, the next day you’re gasping for air. The recovery? It takes weeks. Hospital beds, oxygen support, slow steps toward mobility. Even after discharge, patients walk in unsteadily. They still need help to breathe.

I often tell them: "Falling sick is like dropping fifty floors in a lift. Recovery means climbing every floor back–one stair at a time."

Bangladesh, politically and institutionally, has fallen fifty floors. The authoritarianism, the impunity, the stolen elections, the censorship–none of this gets undone overnight. There’s no express elevator to reform. We must take the stairs.

The problem is, too many people want Bangladesh fixed by Monday. They want a broken democracy to function like Sweden’s by the weekend. But shortcuts don’t work in politics any more than they do in medicine.

There’s no fast-forward to nation-building.

The silver lining

Thankfully, pressure for reform is mounting–from political parties, as well as from academic and civil society groups determined to drag this country up, floor by painstaking floor.

One such platform, BRAIN and Voice for Reform–Citizens’ Coalition, is gaining momentum. I am proud to be part of this effort, alongside voices like Shahidul Alam and Irene Khan, who are now at the forefront of our civic conscience.

This coalition has put forward a focused 7+2 reform framework. I have signed on. Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s this: democratic decay may be sudden, but democratic restoration is slow, deliberate, and fiercely earned.

These days, the reform chatter is relentless. Civil society forums, think tanks, party manifestos–all bursting with checklists, timelines, and utopian blueprints. But let’s strip away the noise.

Strip it down to one reform–just one–that could permanently alter the course of Bangladesh’s democratic trajectory: the institutionalization of a politically neutral interim government to oversee elections.

That alone could change everything.

A truly nonpartisan electoral process every five years would set off a chain reaction. Accountability would begin to matter again. Governance would stop being theater. The culture of impunity would crack.

A fair election doesn’t just decide a government–it disciplines one. When power becomes conditional, not eternal, ruling parties are forced to act like public servants instead of permanent proprietors.

Imagine a BNP government in 2026 with the certainty that in five short years instead of with the expectation of ruling indefinitely, it will once again face voters under a neutral administration it does not control.

That kind of accountability reshapes political behavior. Suddenly, decisions must consider consequences. Corruption becomes a liability rather than a legacy. And if not in the first term, then by the second–after losing once and regaining power–governing becomes a lesson in humility.

But we’ve been down this road before. In 2006, BNP’s clumsy attempt to manipulate the caretaker system by tweaking the Chief Justice’s retirement age shattered public trust.

And the Awami League, like constitutional vandals, took the opening and set the whole system on fire–abolishing the caretaker provision altogether under the guise of legal rectitude, but with the intent of permanent electoral control.

That can’t be allowed to happen again.

So the real question is no longer just whether we can bring the caretaker government back. The question is: how do we prevent its capture, its corruption, its eventual demolition–by any party, under any government? How do we future-proof it?

The answer doesn’t lie in dozens of scattered reforms. It lies in one bold structural redesign.

A bold solution

Bangladesh needs a second chamber. A bicameral parliament–to build safeguards instead of adding bureaucracy, but The lower house can stay as is, driven by first-past-the-post elections.

But the upper house must be different: proportional in representation, balanced in power, and constitutionally mandated to act as the republic’s democratic firewall.

In this upper chamber, seats wouldn’t be won through constituency politics, but allocated according to national vote share. A party with 40% of the vote gets 40% of the seats–no more, no less.

Independents would select their own representatives for a portion of reserved seats. This house wouldn’t exist for symbolic deliberation; it would exist to protect the republic.

Its core responsibilities would be clear, and sacred: selecting the head of the caretaker government with a two-thirds vote; confirming appointments to the judiciary and constitutional bodies like the Election Commission; and approving constitutional amendments–ensuring that no single party, no matter how inflated its majority, can rewrite the rules of democracy to suit its power.

It’s a practical, durable mechanism to end the game of musical chairs that’s gutted our politics for the past two decades.

And the BNP, of all parties, should be the first to endorse it. Not out of idealism, but out of survival. For all its flaws, BNP is not structurally wired for fascism.

It doesn’t command the state’s repressive machinery. It doesn’t have the capacity to rule without accountability–not sustainably, not systemically. Guardrails like a proportional upper house aren’t a threat to its power; they’re a guarantee of its future relevance.

Because here’s the truth: every party wants to bend the rules when they’re in power. But every party becomes a believer in checks and balances the moment they’re out. Smart parties enshrine those protections while they still can.

So let’s abandon the illusion that Bangladesh can be fixed overnight. Let’s stop pretending we can legislate our way into Scandinavian serenity by Friday. Instead, let’s do something harder–and more honest: build the structure that makes democracy self-correcting. One reform. One upper house. One chance to stop the cycle.

We’ve fallen far. But with the right mechanism, we can climb back–step by step, election by election, government by government.

Not with miracles. With institutions.

Why does the BNP need to play an active role?

And here’s the truth we don’t want to admit: we have no idea who will be in power in 2031.

We don’t know whether the next government will be a traditional democratic force–or something more sinister. Will it be another incarnation of the Awami League’s authoritarianism, cloaked in nationalism and state power?

Or will it be a rising religio-fascist outfit like Jamaat, using the ballot as a means to shut down democracy from within?

We cannot gamble the constitution on hope. We must inoculate it–right now–with the structural vaccine it needs to survive any political virus. That vaccine is a proportional upper house. A chamber built but for resilience.

And it must begin with the BNP.

BNP has already paid its dues in the ledger of national reform. This is a party that dismantled the one-party state in 1975 and reintroduced multi-party democracy. It restored a free press in an era when censorship was the rule, not the exception.

In 1991, for the sake of national unity, it sacrificed its own ideological preference for a presidential system and shifted to a parliamentary one–arguably, one of the most selfless political decisions in South Asian democratic history.

And in 1996, despite intense political pressure, it introduced the caretaker government system, acknowledging the people’s right to vote without fear.

Now, at another pivotal moment, BNP must act again–not just to reclaim its credibility, but to protect the democratic future of the nation. It must be the one to lead the charge for embedding a proportional upper house into our constitution.

Some argue for grand reform commissions and sweeping, thousand-point agendas. They dream of a reengineered state, redesigned from top to bottom. But that’s not how democracies are rebuilt.

That’s how fantasies are drafted. I don’t buy into utopias. I’m a pragmatist. I believe in what can be done, not just what ought to be imagined.

And what can be done–what must be done–is clear: one reform, one mechanism, one check on power that will ripple across every other institution of the state.

The proportional upper house is not a silver bullet. It is something far more powerful: a long-term antidote to the recurring sickness of authoritarian drift. Implement it, and you lay the foundation for every other reform to follow–judicial independence, electoral credibility, constitutional integrity.

Because with one chamber of government permanently tethered to the will of the voter, no party, no ideology, no tyrant can monopolize the system unchecked.

So, there are no shortcuts to national healing. But there is a path forward.

And it begins with the only reform that matters right now–the one that ensures all others will one day be possible.

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Rumi Ahmed is a Texas based Physician and Political analyst