Dhaka, Feb 11 (.) As Bangladesh moves in to vote for the upcoming 13th national parliamentary elections, and the referendum on the so-called July Charter, on Thursday, the formerly ruling and currently-banned Awami League has slammed the charter and the vote as a “sham”, noting that most of the vague document was formed largely without the participation of all registered political parties.
The July Charter – formed post the mass uprising in 2024 – is a vague charter which seeks to overhaul the constitutional character of Bangladesh by replacing the existing tenets of socialism, democracy, secularism, and nationalism, as per the ideas of ‘Bangabandhu’ former PM Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, with a new school of thought deriving from the July Uprising, the AL claimed.
The party said the new political system replaces the core tenets with four new vaguely defined principles of equality, dignity, pluralism and anti-fascism. “Its deliberate removal of the foundational tenets which identified the country as a socialist, inclusive, secular democracy based on Bengali nationalism, with more loosely defined principles promoting Bangladeshi nationalism, have been alleged to be a veiled attempt at overturning the country into a more exclusivist theocratic Islamic republic”.
Commenting on the charter’s participatory process, the party noted that while leaders of several parties were present during its formation, the newly-formed National Citizen Party (NCP) – currently a major political player – was surprisingly absent, due to campaigning in Cox’s Bazar at the time.
Noting that a revised version of the charter was subsequently published on October 31, last year, post the publication of the revised document, it said “the BNP and several other political parties alleged that it differed from the first version they had signed. Although the allegations were serious, Ali Riaz and Yunus moved forward without giving them much attention, leaving behind the seeds of possible future disputes.”
Upon reviewing the most recent version of the charter from today, the appendix of the July National Charter, 2025, showed that 33 political parties were present during its drafting. However, a comparison with the latest list of registered political parties on the Election Commission’s official website, shows that at present, there are 62 political parties, the Awami League said.
Furthermore, out of the 33 parties that formed the original draft, only 26 are currently registered, with the other seven that were party to discussions about the document no longer having any registration with the EC.
The Awami League, further highlighed the document’s often-criticised exclusionary nature, stating, “Of the 26 registered parties, 9 received their registration after August 5, 2024. Among these 9, 4 were registered after the July Charter was drafted.”
However, out of these four registered parties, the NCP was not present during the draft of the document, underscoring its alleged exclusionary nature and showcasing that it “does not encompass the views of all registered political parties,” the ALa added.
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