Bangladesh Referendum: The Big Post-Election Flashpoint? | Bangladesh Election 2026 News

Next to last week’s parliamentary elections in Bangladeshvoters also cast their ballots in a national referendum on key constitutional reforms proposed for the country following the July 2024 uprising and ouster of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

The July National Charter, which most political parties signed last year, was approved by 60.26 percent of voters.

But that vote has now exposed a split between the victorious Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Tariq Rahmanand the opposition, led by Jamaat-e-Islami.

Newly elected BNP MPs on Tuesday refused to take an oath as members of a new Constitution Reform Council, throwing the future of reforms into doubt.

We break down in which the national referendum Bangladesh It was all about why the country was divided over it and what happens next.

What is the context?

In July 2024, students in Bangladesh began protesting against a conventional job quota system, which reserved a significant proportion of prized government jobs for descendants of Bangladesh’s 1971 freedom fighters, now widely regarded as the political elite.

Hasina has ordered a brutal crackdown as the protests escalate. Nearly 1,400 people were killed, and more than 20,000 were wounded, according to the country’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT), which Hasina later found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced her to death. She is currently in exile in India, where she fled after her expulsion.

After Hasina went into exile, her Awami League party, which had been in power for 15 years under her leadership, was also ban of all political activities. The latest election was the first since the uprising.

What is the July Charter?

After Hasina was ousted, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus took over as the country’s interim leader of a provisional government in August 2024.

The July National Charter 2025 was drawn up by the provisional government, setting out a road map for constitutional amendments, legislative changes and the enactment of new laws.

It contains more than 80 proposals to overhaul Bangladesh’s system of government, with key reforms “increasing women’s political representation, imposing term limits on prime ministers, expanding presidential powers, expanding fundamental rights and protecting judicial independence,” according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA).

The charter also recommends creating a 100-member upper house alongside Bangladesh’s current single parliamentary body, the 350-member Jatiya Sangsad.

The GDP was skeptical on the July National Charter referendum for months during the transitional government, which sometimes signaled a “no”, until party leader Tarique Rahman publicly endorsed a “yes” vote on 30 January and the BNP said it would accept the charter if it was passed in the referendum.

In particular, analysts say, the BNP appeared opposed to proposals to use proportional representation to fill the upper house, which, it argued, could dilute large parliamentary majorities under the current electoral system.

Now that the charter has been approved, the new MPs must form the Constitution Reform Council to enact the constitutional amendments in the charter. The implementation process must be completed within 180 days of the establishment of the council.

Did the referendum cause division in Bangladesh?

On Tuesday, newly elected members of parliament were sworn in.

They were asked to take two oaths. The first was the standard pledge to uphold the Constitution of Bangladesh. The second obliged them to respect and implement the July National Charter 2025.

But the newly elected BNP MPs did not take the second oath, drawing criticism from members of Jamaat and its allies, the National Citizen Party (NCP), a party formed by students who led the anti-Hasina protests in 2024.

Under an implementation order detailing how the July National Charter will be turned into law, the Constitutional Reform Council is to be made up of MPs who are also sworn in as councilors at the same ceremony. This technically means that only the Jamaat, the NCP and a small number of others who took the second oath are currently eligible to sit on the Council.

Because more than two-thirds of the MPs have not taken the second oath, the Council has not yet been constituted. It is unclear what will happen next regarding the formation of the council.

What is the biggest bottleneck for the GDP?

Salahuddin Ahmed, a BNP standing committee member and MP, told local media after the ceremony that BNP flatly refused to take the Charter Oath because, in their opinion, the Constitution Reform Council, which will be charged with carrying out the reforms, has not yet been approved by parliament.

“None of us have been elected as the members of this ‘Constitution Reform Council’. This council is not even part of the constitution yet. It will only be considered legal when it is approved by the elected parliament,” Ahmed said, according to local media reports.

However, on Tuesday he reaffirmed the BNP’s promise to implement the reforms: “We are committed and committed to implementing the July National Charter exactly as it was signed as a document of political consensus.”

The main concern of the BNP is understood to be about the reforms related to the establishment of a second upper chamber of the parliament with 100 members.

“Major parties appear to agree on almost all the core referendum issues. However, disagreement remains on specific details, especially regarding the formation of the proposed Upper House,” Asif Nazrul, a law professor at Dhaka University, told Al Jazeera earlier.

Bangladesh currently holds all elections using the first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system. Each voter chooses one candidate, and whoever gets the most votes in a seat wins it.

This can create a large gap between a party’s overall vote share and its current share of seats. Theoretically, one party could win 51 percent of the vote in each seat, while another could win 49 percent in each seat. However, the first party will receive 100 percent of the seats.

Any party that wins at least 151 of the 300 seats can form a government on its own, while the runner-up in seat count becomes the official opposition.

In last week’s election, the BNP-led alliance won 212 seats, followed by 77 for the Jamaat-led alliance, out of the 297 parliamentary seats for which results were announced.

The BNP wants to keep the system of FPTP, but the July charter recommends that the upper house be filled with representatives elected according to the proportional electoral representation system, which will give parties a share of seats more in line with their share of the overall vote.

The formation of the upper house in accordance with the FPTP system, on the other hand, will put the BNP at an advantage due to the large percentage of seats it won in parliament.

“The BNP is in favor of forming it (the upper house) in proportion to parliamentary seats, while Jamaat and the NCP prefer a system of proportional representation. Resolving this dispute remains a key challenge,” Nazrul said.