BANGLADESH MOVES CLOSER TO TRANSITION TO BICAMERAL LEGISLATURE

Following the democratic upheaval and widespread protests in 2024, Bangladesh is looking to embark on a series of constitutional and parliamentary reforms

Kamran Reza Chowdhury is a journalist, researcher, author, columnist and political commentator based in Bangladesh.

Fifty-four years after independence in 1971, the second largest economy in South Asia, Bangladesh has embarked on a massive democratic reform since the August 2024 fall of authoritarian premier, Sheikh Hasina who ruled the country with an 'iron hand' since January 2009.

The initiative of overhauling the country’s existing democratic system - reforming the constitution and the electoral system - has apparently received widespread public support as the deposed former Prime Minister had changed the country’s charter in June 2011 to hold elections under her government instead of a non-party caretaker system that she had envisaged in the mid-1990s when she was the Leader of the Opposition.

The abolition of the caretaker system from the Bangladesh Constitution enabled Sheikh Hasina to hold three consecutive polls in 2014, 2018 and 2024 that were widely considered to be a foregone conclusion, and she held on to power by destroying constitutional institutions like the Election Commission and politicising the police, civil administration and the judiciary.

Hasina’s rule marginalised the opposition through hundreds of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances, establishing a secret prison at the intelligence facility, jailing a three-time Prime Minister Khaleda Zia in two false corruption cases, making the Legislature a ‘one-party show’, and scuttling freedom of expression and the freedom of the press by enacting repressive digital security laws.

In the Freedom House report 2024,1 Bangladesh scored 40 out of 100 on political rights and civil liberties.

Bangladesh cannot be separated from the Westminster model of democracy for many historic reasons.

The Bengali nationalist movement led to the first of the six-point demands (1966) that Bangladesh must be “federal and parliamentary, in which the election to the federal legislature and to the legislatures of the federating units shall be direct and on the basis of universal adult franchise.”

Sheikh Hasina backpaddled on the question of parliamentary democracy for Bangladesh and failed.

An unprecedented wave of nationwide protests, popularly known as July-August uprising, led by the students demanding the abolition of the quota system in public service, started in early July 2024 and continued for two months with massive scale violence involving the police, the intelligence apparatus and the ruling party loyalists against the protesters.

On 5 August 2024, Hasina hurriedly boarded an Air Force helicopter which took her to India for refuge as the marchers from all sides streamed to occupy her official residence Gono Bhaban. Hasina, the eldest daughter of Bangladesh’s founding President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, becomes the first head of government to leave the country in the face of mass upsurge.

According to the UN fact-finding mission, a staggering 1,400 people may have died, many of them minors, with thousands more injured in the two-month protest.

On 8 August 2024, Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus formed an interim administration in Bangladesh. Political parties extended unwavering support to Yunus calling for an end to future ‘fascism’.

Yunus promised to reform all of Bangladesh’s democratic institutions, including reform of the Constitution, before holding the next general elections between December 2025 and June 2026.

Dr Ali Riaz, a Bangladeshi-born American Professor of Political Science at the Illinois State University, headed the first ever Constitution Reform Commission which submitted over 100 recommendations to Professor Yunus.

Professor Riaz said that the recommendations were made to ‘remove fascism’ from the present Constitution of Bangladesh, which “concentrated unchecked power on the Prime Minister”, although some experts attributed Hasina’s authoritarianism to lack of political consensus and violent political culture.

The Riaz Commission’s remarkable recommendations include the introduction of a dual Chamber in Bangladesh.

According to the recommendations, the Lower House, to be known as Jatiya Sangsad, will consist of 400 Members of Parliament (MPs) directly elected by adult franchise. Out of the total of 400 seats, one-hundred constituencies would be reserved for women, and they will be directly elected by popular votes.

Currently Bangladesh’s 350-strong unicameral Parliament consists of 300 MPs directly elected by the voters from 300 constituencies while 50 seats are reserved for women. The MPs from the reserved seats are indirectly elected by the MPs through a proportional representation system.

The proposed Upper House, or Senate, will comprise 105 seats - 100 seats would be filled according to the proportional representation system while the President will nominate five Senators. Thirty percent of seats in the Senate must be preserved for women.

Political parties cannot nominate their party members for more than 50% of their due share of the Senate membership. They must nominate the other 50% of seats on a non-partisan basis: from different professional groups such as citizens, educationists, scientists, philanthropists, labour representatives, women development workers, cultural figures and people from other segments of society.

Law making in the Bangladesh Parliament draws criticism from many experts and civil society groups, as MPs are observed to invest more time in praising their leaders than examining the laws placed before the Chamber, although MPs at the Parliamentary Standing Committees scrutinise every single law before its passage in the Legislature.

The introduction of an Upper Chamber is likely to make law-making in Bangladesh more people-oriented and exhaustive as the Members of both Chambers will enjoy freedom to vote against their parties, with few exceptions.

However, a proposed second Chamber does not always meet with universal approval:

“The absence of checks and balances in a single chamber may lead to hasty and poorly considered decisions, to technically deficient legislation or to excessively partisan legislation that makes no concession to strongly held minority views. For these reasons, many countries have a second legislative chamber - often with a distinct composition, function and powers - in order to complement and balance the primary chamber. In many contexts, however, a second chamber may add additional complexities, delays and costs for little additional benefit; a properly designed single-chamber legislature, with extra-parliamentary checks and balances, may be more appropriate.”

The Bangladesh Constitution Reform Commission further recommended dropping three out of four fundamental principles - Nationalism, Socialism and Secularism - from the Constitution and replacing them with Democracy, Equality, Human Dignity, Social Justice and Pluralism as the fundamental principles of the New Constitution.

The Commission further recommended the creation of the National Constitutional Council (NCC) that will recommend names to the President for the appointees to different posts. This will curtail the unlimited power of the Prime Minister over government appointments.

The Commission also recommended that the Prime Minister must not hold the posts of the Leader of the House and the ruling party chief at the same time. Its conclusion was that holding all three posts at the same time gives an individual unchecked power that must be curtailed with a constitutional bar.

It further said that the same person cannot become Prime Minister for more than two terms.

The National Consensus Commission formed by Professor Yunus has been holding talks with the political parties for the implementation of the recommendations made by the Constitutional Reform Commission and the Election System Reform Commission.

The presumptive winner in the next general elections and Bangladesh’s largest party, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) - which has formed four governments since its formation on 1 September 1978, under the aegis of the popular military ruler Major General Ziaur Rahman - has already unveiled its 31-point reform proposals that included introducing a bicameral Legislature.

While different political parties have different views on the recommendations of the two commissions, the introduction of a bicameral Parliament has garnered support from all political parties and this reform may be introduced in the near future.

• Kamran Reza Chowdhury is a journalist, researcher, author, columnist and political commentator based in Bangladesh. He achieved M.Phil. in 2002. In his journalism career of over 27 years, he has devoted most of his time writing about parliamentary politics and the political parties in Bangladesh for different media outlets at home and abroad.

• He was the General Secretary of Bangladesh Parliament Journalists’ Association for eight years (20142022) and Editor of the association’s bilingual publication, Parliament Journal. He is regarded as having one of the longest institutional memories regarding parliamentary politics in Bangladesh.