Democracy Must Remain a State Principle

The Consensus Commission, formed by the then interim government with Chief Adviser Dr Md Yunus as its Chairman and Mr Ali Riaz as its Vice-Chairman, held lengthy deliberations and a series of talks with some political parties, including BNP, Jamaat-e-Islami and NCP, before finalising a political document widely known as the July Charter. The signing ceremony of the document, which contained dissenting views of the parties, was held on the Parliament premises with much fanfare. The document proposed wider reforms, including reforms of state institutions as well as the Constitution, reportedly aimed at strengthening state institutions and ensuring accountability and transparency in governance.

Earlier, the interim government formed many separate commissions for reforming vital state institutions. A separate Constitution Reform Commission was also formed to recommend changes to the Constitution, reflecting the hopes and expectations of the people following the July Uprising. Each commission came up with a set of recommendations for reform of the concerned state institution. The Consensus Commission basically tried to reach a consensus with the political parties on the contents of the reports of each commission through discussion and finalised its report.

After finalisation of the said Charter, the interim government did not sit idle; rather, it created a legal framework to implement the recommendations of the July Charter and issued a Constitutional Order by the President containing provisions for holding a referendum and forming a Constitutional Reform Committee after the formation of Parliament. Though there are lots of controversies as to the legal validity of the said Constitutional Order, with BNP rejecting the Order and terming it fraudulent, a case challenging the constitutional validity of the Order is still pending with the court. 

Any reforms that reflect the people’s expectations by ensuring transparency and accountability in government and promoting a healthy political culture are welcome. But attempts to alter the state’s character or foundational principles in the name of reform should always be considered off-limits.

There are some good recommendations in the Charter, which include strengthening institutions, checks and balances among different organs of the state, a 10-year term for the Prime Minister, creation of a separate Judicial Secretariat under the Supreme Court, modification of Article 70 by confining its jurisdiction only to no-confidence motions and the budget, and introducing a provision barring the Prime Minister from simultaneously holding the post of party chief. All these changes to the Constitution could be made through constitutional amendments as per the provisions of the Constitution and through issuing ordinances, as had been done earlier, many of which were passed in Parliament in the form of bills.

Any reforms that reflect the people’s expectations by ensuring transparency and accountability in government and promoting a healthy political culture are welcome. But attempts to alter the state’s character or foundational principles in the name of reform should always be considered off-limits.

The Charter proposed removing four state principles enshrined in the Constitution, including democracy, and replacing them with equality, human dignity and social justice mentioned in the Proclamation of Independence. Any discerning reader of the Constitution can easily find the proposed three principles in the preamble of the Constitution. Still, nobody objects to the insertion of these three principles in the Constitution while keeping the existing four principles intact. As the existing principles are directly linked to the struggle of the country’s independence, they reflect the spirit of our great Liberation War, which was a desire for a separate state for Bengalis with a democratic, non-communal polity that would uphold human rights and fundamental rights.

BNP’s position is known: to restore the principles as modified and enacted during the rule of Shaheed President Ziaur Rahman through the Fifth Amendment. During this time, Bengali nationalism was replaced by Bangladeshi nationalism and secularism was replaced by faith in Almighty Allah. But democracy was intact.

The Charter proposed the abolition of all the principles, including democracy. Why abolish democracy? The people of the country fought and sacrificed their lives for democracy not only during the Pakistan period but also in independent Bangladesh, when democracy was non-functional due to martial law and authoritarian rule.

Even one of the expectations of the uprisings of 1990 and 2024 was democracy through fair and participatory elections. Barring some far-right political parties and their fanatical followers, all other parties and people at large not only believe in democracy but also have an emotional attachment to liberal democracy. To drop democracy from the state principles is simply to succumb to the pressure of far-right elements who want to see the country as a theocratic state. In recent times, we have heard slogans like “down with democracy” from some far-right organisations. Some right-wing intellectuals are openly demanding Khilafat. These right-wing intellectuals are against the four principles of the existing Constitution and subscribe to a meticulously designed religion-secularism binary to demonise secularism and other principles.

In the past, they unleashed propaganda that the four principles were the ideology of a particular party imposed upon the nation after independence. The actual principles are those enunciated in the Proclamation of Independence. The principles of equality, human dignity and social justice enunciated in the Proclamation of Independence are clearly stated in the Preamble of the existing Constitution. Moreover, the authorities who issued the Proclamation of Independence were the members of the committee formed for drafting the Constitution after Liberation. So, the authors of both belonged to the same party. Hence, the notion that the existing four principles of the Constitution were imposed upon the nation by a particular party is quite confusing and misleading.

There had never been any controversy about democracy as a state principle since independence. Democracy symbolises every glorious struggle of the nation, including the Great Liberation War. The uprisings of 1990 and 2024 also reflect the people’s expectations for a true and stable democracy. So why is democracy absent from the July Charter as one of the state principles of the Constitution? BNP has already formed a Parliamentary Committee to bring necessary amendments to the Constitution as per the July Charter and its 31-point reform programmes, which contain its promise to restore the state policy enacted by Shaheed President Ziaur Rahman.