After mass protests forced long-term Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee the country in early August, Bangladesh found itself in a unique moment of opportunity to chart a path towards true democracy.

The interim government that was put in place to deal with the legacy of Hasina’s 15-year authoritarian rule is led by Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and includes civil society leaders.

Yunus, a celebrated civil society activist, is well-equipped to lay the foundations for a new, truly democratic Bangladesh. He can draw on the experiences of Bangladeshi civil society to enable social cohesion and bring about a much-needed reckoning with the country’s tortured past. There are many ways in which he can protect and expand civic spaces. He can, for example, disband security units responsible for enforced disappearances and torture, reform the much-maligned NGO Affairs Bureau to ensure it supports civil society, or amend the Foreign Donations Law which creates a bureaucratic maze for civil society to receive international funding.

He should, however, act fast, as history tells us moments of opportunity and optimism like this can be fleeting. After a dictatorial regime is removed through revolution, democratic structures can fall prey to a rotation of elites. In the absence of a plan for what’s next, pro-democracy elements can be overwhelmed and derailed by fast-moving events.

In such scenarios, nationalist and authoritarian forces, who continue to hold power due to their alliances with the clergy and military, often fill the emerging power vacuum. At times, the military itself takes........

© Al Jazeera