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Bangladesh’s new government is set to convene its first parliamentary session today (Thursday, March 12), and the atmosphere will likely be anything but a routine opening of a legislative term, overshadowed by unresolved differences on several fundamental issues between the treasury and opposition benches.

This parliament assumes office after an unusual interlude in the country’s political life. For more than 18 months, Bangladesh was governed by an interim administration that took charge following a political settlement after the 2024 uprising, which brought an end to Sheikh Hasina’s 16-year rule.

Even before the session begins, disagreements have surfaced over the ceremonial opening of parliament itself. Under constitutional convention, the first sitting of a newly elected parliament is inaugurated by an address from the president. But the decision to allow President Mohammed Shahabuddin – appointed during the previous Awami League government – to deliver that address has triggered objections from sections of the opposition. 

Leaders of the student-led National Citizen Party (NCP) have argued that the president, having been chosen during the Awami-era administration, lacks the moral authority to preside over the opening of a parliament that emerged from the uprising that ended that government.

The ruling side, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) however, maintains that the constitution clearly mandates the president to address the opening session and that bypassing the office would create a new constitutional complication at the very start of the parliamentary term.

Signs of deeper disagreements are also evident in how lawmakers themselves have taken office. Members of the BNP, which secured a two-thirds majority in the February election, have taken the conventional constitutional oath as members of parliament. Opposition lawmakers – primarily from Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and the NCP – have taken two separate oaths: one as parliamentarians and another as members of a proposed Constitution Amendment Council, a reform body envisioned in the July Charter drafted after the 2024 uprising.

As a result, the new parliament begins its first sitting with two distinct interpretations of its role. One group of lawmakers views the chamber as functioning entirely within the framework........

© The Wire