After the July people’s coup, the attempt to find an alternative within the representative power and governance structure is a reaction against the power of the people.
‘Civil society ‘has repeatedly been used as a political force. But the fact is that this civil society is basically an NGO-centric middle-class representative organisation.
The mass uprising that took place in July 2024 in Bangladesh surprised everyone by giving a direct manifestation of the sovereign power of the people. We’ve all seen it. The coup was not merely the fall of a political government, but a fundamental constitutional moment. Where the people have demonstrated their sovereign power outside the existing state order, they are historically ready to form Bangladesh in a new way.
But under the existing constitution, the advisory government was sworn in and the old state system was maintained through a constitutional revolution. There was no proclamation of the July coup. The mass uprisings were reduced to a vacuum of so-called reforms by the formation of several reform commissions headed by the elite of the society.
“Later, a kind of ideological reaction and rhetoric against the goal of the July Coup began to form through various intellectuals, research institutions and the media, whose goal was to narrow the coup down to” “institutional reform” “and” “step-by-step change.” “” That is, the work of making a statement in favour of the constitutional revolution also began.
“As an example of making statements that contradict the ideals and aspirations of the July coup, we can analyse the report of a roundtable discussion titled” “How the democratic transition of the state can happen” “jointly organised by the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) and Prothom Alo on June 16.” The apt title of Prothom Alo on this roundtable is’ Transforming Democracy through Institutional Reforms’.
It should be noted that reformist politics, which contradicts the goals and ideals of the July Coup, denies the political process of structural transformation. They don’t want to reform the state. They want to reform existing institutions. “In the words of Ali Riaz,” “The real work is to make the institutions stand up, to make them work.” The second is to try to mobilise a collective force for a long-term democratic transition. I do not see the possibility of doing this through the existing political forces. ‘
Ali Riaz considers the organisation of the existing looters and mafia class representatives as a ‘political party’ and assumes that the power of the people lies only in them. The political parties considered the representatives of the looters and mafia class as the activities of the advisory government also contain counter-revolutionary ideas against the mass uprising.
The mass uprisings were not led by looters and the mafia class. The people are absent in the thoughts of the advisory government, including Ali Riaz. As a result, it can be seen how the counter-revolutionary (reformist) rhetoric in ignorance-blame or in wisdom deprives the ‘people’ from the central position of political consciousness. And there the representatives of the looters and the mafia class were replaced.
After that, the sovereign authority of the people was replaced in the name of institutional reforms, virtually denying the democratic structural power of the people. But the power that we saw on August 5 and the advisory government is the result of that.
“Viewing the coup as an” “opportunity” “: repairing the system, not the structure”
“Speakers at the roundtable presented the July coup as essentially a” “window of opportunity” “where existing democracy could be revived by reforming some institutions.” But this view completely negates the constitutive power of the people and goes in the way of preserving the continuity of the existing state structure.
“” “The main task at the moment, however reasonable it may sound, is to build up institutions and mobilise collective forces,” “making the constitutional rise of the people a disciplinary issue within the system.” Rather than seeing the coup as the language of unconstitutional new construction, the speakers confined it to the limited scope of civil society or pro-NGO reforms created by the Western superpowers.
Absence of the demand for the construction of the constitution and the absence of the people at the source of power
“At no point in the round-table talks did anyone speak of a” “new constitution” “or a” “constitutional process” “; rather, all the speakers wanted to seek reforms within the existing constitution and state structure, such as reform of the electoral system, the independence of the commission or the participation of women in the upper house.” This shows that the speakers do not recognise the people as the source of power; rather, they consider the state institution as the holder of power. But the state institutions could not protect Sheikh Hasina.
Antonio Negri, in his book Insurgencies: Constituent Power and the Modern State, has shown that the structural power of the people is a structural power that defies existing constitutions and legal frameworks to create new structures and systems. In the context of Bangladesh, if the post-coup process is not such a structural process, the institutional reform and maintenance of the existing state structure will be done to destroy the structural forces. It is an important task to easily identify the rhetoric of the anti-people counter-revolutionary trend in post-coup Bangladesh.
Although there was talk of reforming and forming institutions, none of the speakers took a direct position on the sovereign power of the people, their right to make their own laws or the political upheaval of building a new constitution. It is clear that they want to replace the idea of structural power of the people with institutional management.
This anti-people’s rights ideology, which is rooted in civil intellectual thought, is in fact the anti-people’s uprising of July. Tackling it intellectually is an important task for the pro-coup forces in the coming days. The development of the democratic trend in the coming days will depend on how much we can channel this intellectual trend of the society towards the democratic trend through self-criticism and review.
The confusion of representation versus direct participation
In the roundtable, Mirza M Hasan and Imran Matin brought the concepts of ‘Direct Democracy’, ‘Deliberative Democracy’, ‘Countervailing Citizen Power’, etc. But this is only one type of managerial reform. The purpose of which is to protect the authority of the representatives over the people rather than establishing the people at the source of power.
After the July people’s coup, the attempt to find an alternative within the representative power and governance structure is a reaction against the power of the people. They made no real proposal for the direct decision-making power of the people (such as the Popular Assembly or the Majlis-based lawmaking). On the contrary, their theories are nothing more than mere rhetoric in the existing colonial bureaucracy and market-controlled society of Bangladesh, as much as they are effective in the European or Latin American context.
The representative-based alternative theory is virtually unachievable in Bangladesh. Because the state is a neo-colonial administrative structure, where bureaucracy, militarism and foreign donors never allow the direct participation of the people in policy or law-making. Therefore, the fight for democracy in Bangladesh has to start from here. There’s no alternative. Intellectual world Ignorance of the history and existing political reality of Bangladesh is a serious danger. Alas, we are not trying to learn anything from the experience of such a mass uprising.
Planned Silence on the Constitutional Revolution
“None of the negotiators commented or criticised the” “constitutional counter-revolution” “that took place after August 8, 2024, i.e. the oath of the military-backed advisory government and the upholding of the fascist constitution.” As a result, the meeting practically strengthened the reactionary political line against the essence of the mass uprising.
On August 5, we saw the emergence of the structural power to restore the sovereign authority of the people. There was also the possibility of implementing it through a constitutional process, that is, formulating a new constitution. There is no explanation as to why it failed. Now reform thinking is erasing that possibility and becoming an ideological strategy to erase the mass uprising from the memory and will of the people. It’s dangerous.
Democracy means rule by the people. In the language of political literature, ‘the sovereign is the one who decides the exception.’ ‘ “From that point of view, if the people of Bangladesh were the collective agents of creating a” “constitutional exception” “to the July coup, the establishment of a military-backed government without initiating a new constitutional process is a constitutional reaction against that constitutional decision.”
Speakers at the Round Table Discuss the Fundamental Political Truth of the ‘Constitutional Revolution’
“The speakers at the roundtable are only talking about” “step-by-step reforms,” “deviating from the basic political fact that this” “constitutional counter-revolution” “took place and denying the essence of the mass uprising.” By this they are in fact giving ideological legitimacy to the constitutional revolution.
The civil society and the middle class
‘Civil society ‘has repeatedly been used as a political force. But the fact is that this civil society is essentially a middle-class representative organisation centred on NGOs, which replaces the direct power claims of the people with attempts to mediate through experts, advisors, and the thinking class.
“Sheldon Olin called this system” “managed democracy” “- where citizens chosen from among the elite, rather than the people, participate in the state’s affairs.” In such a situation, democracy becomes a reactionary conservative system, due to which the people’s coup d’etat cannot create any real political conditions or structure; rather, the people’s power is fragmented and absorbed into the old institutions.
“Speakers have repeatedly returned to the term” “civil society,” “but this society actually transforms the” “people” “into a kind of NGO-oriented middle-class representation.” Because of this, the ‘people’ as the driving force of the mass uprising disappeared. Instead of the political self-determination of the people, their speakers become important. That is, the assembly-committee, the round-table ‘civil group’ becomes the people’s negotiator with the state, where the civil representative becomes the alternative of the people.
It is important to recognise and understand this process of taking away the power of the people in the name of institutional reform instead of structural transformation. Leaving behind the call to form a new Bangladesh and form a new constitution, the attempt to find a solution to the problem within the state structure is clearly anti-people.
The purpose of the ideology of ‘reform’ is to maintain the old state in contrast to the establishment of people’s sovereignty. The thought that denies the power of the people to build a constitution is, in fact, a reproduction of existing power. As successors of the people’s uprising, it will be our duty to go beyond this reactionary line and open the possibility of a new democracy for the people of Bangladesh.
New Constitution vs Reform – It’s Time to Decide on Behalf of the People
The roundtable organised by Prothom Alo is a planned effort to replace the constitutional rights of the people with constitutional reforms. “The speakers described the coup as” “an opportunity” “to curtail the sovereign decision-making power of the people.” Such talks turn not only democracy, but the very existence of the people into a laboratory of representative rule.
The July Uprising was a historic moment. “What is needed now is a political plan for the construction of a” “people’s republic,” “in which the people themselves will write their own constitution, or politically formulate it, through direct participation in the construction of their own laws, institutions and decisions.”
As Jacques Derrida said, “Writing is not only the condition of law, it is the law of condition.” ‘ It is now up to the people of Bangladesh to formulate a new constitution for the people of Bangladesh.
Farhad Mazhar Poet, Writer and Thinker