There is little reason to lose sleep over the “upcoming” referendum’s outcome.

If the goal is to “mature” a citizenry, then citizens must be allowed to err, to be humbled by their own choices, and to learn, again and again, what their votes truly mean.

Democracy without the right to misjudge is not democracy at all.

If the Yes camp prevails, it will signal that voters, on balance, trust the civil-society technocrats this time around. Perhaps they found the political class too compromised, too steeped in its own mythology of being “pro-poor,” to be believable.

If No wins, it will mean the opposite: a rejection of the reformist intelligentsia and a retreat to familiar, paternalistic politicians who have long promised stability, if not progress.

Either way, this is hardly the moment to sneer at the public’s literacy or capacity for comprehension. The country’s education failures are an indictment of the state, of course not of the electorate.

Both sides, the reformists and the political establishment, have every incentive to shape public opinion, and they inevitably will. Those convinced that the nation’s fate hangs in the balance will do the same, each armed with its own narrative of salvation.

Is civil society advancing its own agenda? Of course. Should it be chastised for politicking while politicians lurch from crisis to crisis, only to be rescued by the very same “nonpartisan” actors they dismiss?

The expectation that civil society fix recurring breakdowns yet remain modest about its influence is a curious one. Perhaps, weary of patching leaks every few years, the reformers simply want to repair the plumbing once and for all.

But step back from the theatrics, and a structural truth emerges. In a system that evolved without a stable mechanism for transferring power, civil society has become indispensable.

The return of the caretaker government–brokered through consensus–virtually guarantees that political actors will be back at the doors of civil society every election cycle.

It shouldn’t be this complicated. Civil society wouldn’t loom so large if the country had managed to solve one basic problem: the peaceful handover of power.

This is achieved routinely in nations that lack a Sheikh Mujib and his “liberation epic”, or a national anthem steeped in revolutionary fervor. And yet, there, democracy somehow works.

The outcome of our incapabilities

Few countries tolerate a political class as incapable as ours–leaders who cannot manage a peaceful transfer of power and who have engineered a constitutional contraption found nowhere else on earth.

And at the same time, without accepting their faults, who still scold civil society for “overreach” and “depoliticization.” The irony would be amusing if it weren’t so corrosive.

This time, the ferocity with which a group of unhinged partisans attacked civil society almost suggested they had stumbled upon a new governing model. They hadn’t.

What they discovered, instead, was the same old vacuum, one they helped create and now resent others for trying to fill.

Yes, Bangladesh still has a handful of professionally accomplished people whose integrity survives intact. But five years from now?

It is entirely plausible that even this small cohort will disappear, drowned out by a louder, cheaper breed of partisan operatives and opportunists. The slide toward a political circus is not a prediction; it is a trajectory.

Everyone understands that Bangladesh needs deep political reform, structural and painstaking. And probably slow.

But the political class, ever allergic to honesty, refuses to admit the obvious that there is no meaningful consensus on anything, and that leaving politicians to “work it out among themselves” is a fantasy.

They have neither the incentive nor the capacity to bargain their way to solutions that carry real costs.

That is why I personally backed what some derided as “forced consensus”: civil society stepping in–again–to compel the political class toward minimal agreement.

I would endorse it again if circumstances demanded it. Someone had to recognize that, in a broken system, voluntary compromise is a myth.

Why a “forced” solution

The idea was hardly radical. Extract whatever reforms are possible now; win the rest through sustained civic pressure.

And if the political settlement collapses–as it has before–use that rupture to extract even more. This is the only strategy that has ever produced incremental progress in a system built on stalemate.

The truth is simple: political parties in Bangladesh never come to the table unless they are cornered. Only in moments of distress do they entertain compromise.

What years of street-level activism might slowly extract can often be secured in a single round of negotiations…if the moment is seized.

But push too hard, demand the impossible 100 percent, and the parties will do what they always do: close ranks, torpedo the process, and blame everyone else for the wreckage.

Fortunately, this time the game ended before it collapsed under its own weight.

Now a reform package–whatever its precise contours–heads to a referendum. I’m not even interested in the fine print. Let the public debate it, mobilize around it, and shape opinion in line with their political instincts.

That is how democratic incentives work. If the election is fair, the result–yes or no–must be accepted and carried forward.

And the next government, whoever leads it, will have no choice but to implement the mandate. Any fallout, or any political blowback–that will be theirs to manage.

That, too, is part of governing.

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Nayel Rahman is a political analyst