Kaniz Kakon

A bus burnt near the Dhaka Zoo on Thursday (13 November); its frame blackened against a sky already heavy with unease. The man who set it on fire fled towards the Turag River and leapt in; his body was later recovered from the water, nameless, young and alone. Not long after, police discovered 32 petrol bombs packed neatly into a suitcase by the Dhaka-Khulna Highway. These two scenes – fire and water, chaos and silence – bookend a nation poised on the threshold of transformation. Bangladesh is preparing for both a national election and a referendum on the July National Charter, which promises to impose term limits on the prime minister, create an upper house, strengthen the judiciary and ensure greater representation for women. The proposals signal a potential new era of balance and accountability. Yet they arrive in a time of suspicion and fear. Political groups argue over legality, businesses fear further unrest, and investors have already begun to retreat. The stock market’s sharp fall of more than 2.5 per cent in a single day mirrors not only economic fragility but also the fragility of confidence itself.

Any other time, the announcement of reform might have inspired public debate; instead, it has produced noise, a confusion of anger, hope and disbelief. While the interim government frames its call for simultaneous voting as efficient and historic, many fear that its haste may compromise its legitimacy. Across the country, the atmosphere has grown brittle. Lockdowns called by the ousted Awami League over the ongoing trial of its top leader have disrupted transport, closed schools and paralysed movement. Vehicles burn, crude bombs explode, and social media hums with accusation and outrage. In this charged environment, everyone speaks, but few are heard. Noise has replaced language as the medium of politics. It is no longer a symbol of energy but of exhaustion: the nation shouting over itself, unable to pause long enough to consider what it truly wants. Every promise of renewal competes with the memory of betrayal. Every gesture towards unity is shadowed by fear of manipulation. And beneath it all runs a deeper exhaustion: the fatigue of citizens who have seen too many beginnings end in repetition.

Yet silence, too, has become part of this soundscape. It is not the silence of indifference but of caution. People follow the news with wary attention; they talk in low voices, waiting to see which way the tide turns. The air is filled with watchfulness, not surrender. In a country that has learnt to survive political storms, restraint has become a survival skill. But democracy withers when fear replaces engagement. A vote is not a measure of obedience; it is an act of trust. If citizens approach the coming election and referendum without that trust, the rituals of democracy will proceed, but their spirit will not. The challenge is, therefore, larger than logistics or law. It is essential to restore confidence in the notion that public discourse, dissent and debate are not to be viewed as risks, but rather as fundamental rights. A free and fair vote requires not only safety and transparency but also the belief that every voice matters. Without that belief, participation becomes performance, and reform becomes choreography.

The images of the burning bus, the floating body, and the suitcase of bombs capture more than violence; they reveal the psychological condition of the country. The man who jumped into the river was not merely fleeing a crime; he was running from a world that no longer made sense. The abandoned suitcase, packed with potential destruction, speaks to anger deferred, waiting for ignition. The stock market’s slump adds another register to the same story: loss of faith in stability, in tomorrow, in the collective ability to steady the course. Each event is a fragment of a single anxiety, the sense that the nation is moving but unsure of its direction. The reform charter, ambitious as it is, will only matter if it can reach beneath this anxiety and rebuild the moral ground on which politics stands. That ground is eroded not by difference but by disbelief. Institutions can be changed by decree, but trust can only be restored through transparency, fairness, and listening.

As the vote approaches, Bangladesh faces a rare and perilous opportunity. The simultaneous election and referendum could mark the rebirth of accountability or the repetition of disillusionment. Reform on paper must be matched by restraint in practice; otherwise, the same noise will return under a new name. The task is not only to decide who governs but also how governance itself is imagined. A true new beginning will not come from fiery rhetoric or symbolic reform but from something quieter and harder: the stages of listening. Democracy is not built by shouting over opponents but by hearing them. The coming weeks will test whether Bangladesh can transform its turbulence into conversation, its fatigue into focus, and its noise into voice. The man who vanished into the river, the bombs left waiting on the roadside, the market’s tremor—all remind us that the future depends on whether the nation chooses to hear itself clearly before it speaks again.

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The writer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at IUBAT and is currently on study leave, residing in Oslo, Norway