Commentary | Imran Ahmed and Roshni Kapur, Reform, Accountability, and Legitimacy in Post-Hasina Bangladesh
Introduction
In late 2025, the International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh found former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina guilty in absentia and sentenced her to death. The trial reflected broader demands for accountability that emerged during the overthrow of her government in 2024. However, the Tribunal’s historical association with politically contested prosecutions raised doubts about whether the proceedings marked a genuine break from past practices or a continuation of politicized and flawed justice under different political conditions. The case also brought into focus tensions between demands for reckoning and the requirements of due process.
Moreover, the verdict brought renewed attention to the longer history of institutional politicization under the previous regime, as well as to the Yunus-led government’s efforts to improve governance and reform key state institutions. Under the former Hasina-led government, institutions such as the judiciary, police, and bureaucracy became closely aligned with the ruling administration. This relationship not only undermined institutional autonomy and compromised institutional integrity, it also hollowed out systems of oversight as a corollary. As a result, these institutions increasingly served the interests of the ruling regime, struggled to operate independently, and failed to command public confidence.
Inevitably, this politicization of state institutions under the former Awami League government entrenched corruption and fostered systems of patronage across the judiciary, civil service, and security forces. In the judiciary, interference in decision-making became apparent in cases involving political opposition members, journalists, and activists. This reinforced perceptions that outcomes were influenced by political considerations. The litigation process was also marked by reports of bribery occurring at multiple stages, from the filing of cases to the delivery of final judgments. Similar patterns were evident beyond the courts, as the civil service and security forces benefited from business, personal, and professional incentives tied to regime loyalty.
Reform efforts to depoliticize, decentralize and strengthen institutions
The Yunus government, appointed after the July uprising, has pursued an extensive and ambitious reform agenda to improve governance and rebuild key institutions before elections are convened. To operationalize this reform agenda, the interim government established a wide-ranging set of sectoral reform commissions tasked with addressing structural weaknesses across the state. In total, eleven commissions were formed, covering areas such as constitutional reform, the electoral system, the judiciary, policing, anti-corruption, public administration, labour rights, women’s affairs, media regulation, health, and local government. These bodies were intended to diagnose institutional failures inherited from the previous regime and to propose reforms aimed at depoliticization, decentralization, and accountability. Their work was later consolidated by the National Consensus Commission, chaired by Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus himself, which sought to synthesize the commission reports into a common political framework through consultations with political parties, student representatives, and civil society actors. These efforts culminated in the July National Charter of 2025, which was signed in November 2025 but not yet formally passed through a referendum.
The initiatives of the interim administration reflected the demands of the July uprising. This included the prevention of the return to entrenched corruption and patronage politics. Reform was thus framed not only as a technocratic exercise but as a necessary safeguard against the re-emergence of institutional capture, corruption and authoritarian modes of rule. However, there were also concerns about whether an interim government can deliver reforms that are durable beyond the transition period when an elected government and parliament with an established mandate would come to power. The interim government has been issuing ordinances, that are intended to be temporary, to carry out its extensive reform agenda since it cannot introduce proper laws. Uncertainty surrounding the interim government’s constitutional basis complicated efforts to ensure that reform initiatives would sustain once electoral politics resumed.
Political hurdles to institute reform
What compounds the difficulty is the inherent political nature of reform itself within Bangladesh’s fractured and polarized political landscape. Reform initiatives inevitably redistribute power and resources, making them sites of contestation rather than neutral exercises in institutional design. This means that reform processes are shaped as much by political bargaining and resistance as by technocratic planning or institutional logic. This has created a difficult balancing act between pushing forward structural reform and preventing backlash.
There was also hesitance on the part of several student-linked and leftist groups to endorse the Charter. This showcased unresolved disagreements over both the scope of reform and the authority of an interim administration to set the parameters of political change. The National Citizens Party (NCP), for example, withheld its endorsement on the grounds that the Charter lacked a clearly articulated constitutional implementation mechanism. Party leaders warned that reforms adopted without firm legal guarantees risked remaining symbolic rather than institutionally binding. Several leftist parties, including the Communist Party of Bangladesh and Bangladesher Samajtantrik Dal (Marxist), similarly declined to sign, arguing that the Charter failed to retain the four founding constitutional principles of nationalism, socialism, democracy, and secularism. Their objections reflected deeper concerns about the ideological direction of the reform process and the place of foundational state principles within the proposed constitutional changes.
Public disagreement over the July Charter was mirrored by similarly divided opinion on how accountability of the past should be pursued. In this context, accountability processes are understood not simply as punitive measures, but as mechanisms through which victims’ suffering is recognized, the rule of law is reaffirmed, future abuses are deterred, and public trust in legal and political institutions is rebuilt. A central point of contention was whether Hasina’s trial ought to have been conducted by a domestic tribunal or an international court. Although the interim government introduced procedural reforms to bring the ICT closer to the Rome Statute, including greater transparency through live broadcasts and regular documentation, these measures did not fully address concerns regarding due process or the absence of independent international oversight.
The imposition of the death penalty further intensified criticism, with many viewing the sentence as symbolic rather than enforceable, given Hasina’s continued exile in India and the low likelihood of extradition. For some observers, the severity of the sentence itself sat uneasily with prevailing expectations of justice and accountability during a period of political transition. International organizations that might otherwise have supported accountability efforts expressed reservations, particularly regarding trials conducted in absentia and the use of capital punishment. Hasina was also represented by court-appointed defence counsel rather than a lawyer of her own choosing. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reiterated that accountability proceedings for international crimes must meet the highest standards of due process and fair trial, especially when they result in a death sentence. Such statements reflected broader concerns that the form accountability in question risked undermining its normative legitimacy and limiting international support at a moment when institutional credibility remained perceptibly fragile.
In Bangladesh, both tensions around reform and the pursuit of accountability has unfolded against a backdrop of deteriorating law and order. The collapse of the previous regime created a power vacuum in which the street mobilization that had enabled Hasina’s removal continues to shape political life. In other words, the forces that expanded political participation during the July uprising paradoxically undermined public authority and order since competing groups turned to demonstrations, confrontation, and coercion to shape political outcomes. Moreover, while political participation has broadened in some arenas, public authority has weakened. This has exposed vulnerable groups, including religious minorities and women, to heightened insecurity. Incidents of moral policing, harassment, and gender-based violence became more visible, alongside attacks on police officers and individuals associated with the former regime.
These developments complicate the public image and sentiments of the interim government. The Yunus government initially enjoyed broad public support when it took office in August 2024, but that backing weakened over time due to concerns over law and order, the pace and scope of reforms pursued by an unelected administration, and perceptions of political bias. These developments strengthened calls for elections so that a government with a clear democratic mandate could assume power. The gap between reformist intent and the administration’s actual governing capacity, combined with the persistence of street mobilization, ultimately blurred the boundary between popular participation and disorder. It placed the government in a difficult position where curbing demonstrations risked alienating key constituencies, while tolerating them reinforced impressions of state weakness.
Concluding Remarks
With the recent elections in February 2026, initial hopes that the Yunus administration would restore order, deliver credible accountability, and entrench meaningful institutional reform have been eroded by persistent law and order challenges, difficulty in securing political consensus, contested accountability processes, and uncertainty over the durability of reforms beyond the transition period. This has recast the interim government less as a stabilizing reformer and more as a caretaker struggling to manage competing demands in a polarized post-Hasina Bangladesh.
Imran Ahmed is a Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. His work focuses on legal history, constitutional politics, and the relationship between law, religion, and state formation in South Asia.
Roshni Kapur is a PhD student at the Department of Indian Languages and Culture and the Department of Conflict and Development Studies at the University of Ghent, focusing on caste and land conflicts among Jaffna Tamils. She is a Visiting Research Fellow at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) in Sri Lanka.
To cite this essay, please use the bibliographic entry suggested below:
Imran Ahmed and Roshni Kapur, “Reform, Accountability, and Legitimacy in Post-Hasina Bangladesh,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, April 2, 2026; https://doi.org/10.52698/UOTP2791.