In August 2024, the streets of Dhaka smelled of smoke and uncertainty. Autorickshaws fell silent. Shopkeepers pulled down shutters early. The old order had collapsed, and in its place stepped an 84-year-old Nobel laureate who promised to shepherd Bangladesh toward democracy.
Eighteen months later, in February 2026, those same streets erupted in celebration. The BNP won a sweeping victory, and Tarique Rahman was sworn in as prime minister. The transition felt complete, a return to the democratic fold after an unelected interregnum.
But as we mark eight months of the new government, a question lingers: What exactly happened during those 18 months?
The Yunus-led interim government departed, handing over power with farewell speeches about sovereignty and dignity. Yet they left behind a trail of shadowy decisions and unanswered questions.
They governed without an electoral mandate but with immense moral authority, born of a mass uprising. That authority came with an obligation: To be more transparent than any elected government, not less.
We have crossed the bridge back to democracy. But the bridge itself was built with materials that now demand inspection. It is time to light a torch and walk back into that tunnel.
The ledger of lost lives
The most damning indictment of the interim government’s priorities is written in the bodies of dead children.
Bangladesh is now in the grip of the world’s worst measles outbreak. Starting mid-March, over 200,000 have been hospitalized across the country, with the overall death toll from the ongoing outbreak being 1,242 as of today. 94% of them were children under five.
In Sylhet, Amin Mia sold the family’s autorickshaw to pay for hospital treatment for his two-year-old son, Arman. The boy died unvaccinated in July. “They came only after I buried my son,” Mia said.
In Chhatak, Humayun Rashid’s nine-month-old daughter Labiba died in June. She was eligible for vaccination in April, when the emergency program lowered the age threshold to six months. “No health worker came to tell us,” her father said.
The outbreak was preventable. In September 2025, the interim government stopped purchasing vaccines through UNICEF -- a reliable system that had worked for years -- and switched to an open tender system, a move widely suspected to be a precursor to privatizing vaccine procurement.
The tender stalled. Vaccine stock depleted. A planned nationwide campaign was cancelled. By 2025, first-dose coverage had fallen to 90% and second-dose to 86%, both below the 95% threshold needed for herd immunity.
The current government reinstated Unicef procurement and launched an emergency campaign in April. But the response has been incomplete.
A Reuters investigation found that the campaign’s target list excluded four million children in the eligible age group. By August, the proportion of confirmed cases who were unvaccinated had actually risen, from 82% to 85%.
The children who died were failed twice: First by the procurement decision, then by the response to its consequences.
The architecture of opacity
When Yunus addressed the nation in those first days, he spoke of transparency. He promised that all advisers would disclose their assets. That promise gathered dust like an abandoned building.
Instead, what emerged was a pattern of decisions that benefited entities intimately connected to the chief adviser himself.
Within two months of Yunus taking office, the National Board of Revenue granted Grameen Bank a five-year income tax exemption until 2029, reversing a 2020 decision. Based on previous records, the bank used to pay around Tk 200 crore annually in taxes, meaning the total revenue loss to the government over five years is estimated to exceed Tk 1,000 crore.
Grameen University, established by Yunus, received approval within three months of applying, while applications from at least 22 other private universities remained pending for years.
Then came the legal reckoning. In September 2026, the High Court ordered Grameen Kalyan, founded by Yunus, to pay Tk 666 crore in outstanding taxes for 2012 through 2017.
The court rejected the organization’s writ petitions, paving the way for the NBR to collect. Jurist Shahdeen Malik said there would be “a certain perception” about the facilities received and that “conflict of interest is another dimension which should have been considered more seriously.”
Transparency International Bangladesh warned that reforms initiated by the interim government had “largely failed” to ensure institutional independence and accountability. TIB concluded that resistance from entrenched interests had derailed much of the interim government’s reform agenda.
The politics of rewriting the past
Perhaps nothing reveals the interim government’s political project more clearly than its enabling of historical erasure.
On February 5, 2025, crowds responding to social media calls for a “bulldozer procession” systematically dismantled the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum at Dhanmondi 32, the historic residence of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
The crowd first vandalized and set fire to the museum around 8:30 pm, and by 11:10 pm, an excavator had been brought to the site. Police had deployed additional forces but “did not create any major obstacles to those moving to the museum in processions.”
The interim government issued a statement calling the events “unexpected and unintended.” Transparency International Bangladesh criticized the government’s “alarming nonchalance.”
A case petition was filed against 27 individuals including Yunus and former law adviser Asif Nazrul. The court dismissed it for “lack of grounds.” No arrests have been made. The accused remain free.
The first demolition occurred under the interim government. The precedent was set in February 2025, when an unelected government with a moral mandate to uphold justice stood by while a national museum was demolished by mobs.
The geopolitical gamble
In his farewell address, Yunus declared that Bangladesh had restored its “sovereignty, national interest, and dignity” in foreign policy. But what did this rhetorical sovereignty actually mean in practice?
On February 9, 2026, just three days before the general election, the interim government signed the US-Bangladesh Agreement on Reciprocal Trade. An analysis of the 32-page agreement found a sharp imbalance in its language: “Bangladesh shall” appears 131 times, while “US shall” appears just six times.
The agreement requires Bangladesh to align with US sanctions regimes, accept US regulatory standards for agricultural products, relax foreign ownership limits in key sectors, and accede to a long list of international intellectual property treaties within specified timelines.
It also embeds binding procurement commitments: 14 Boeing aircraft, approximately $15 billion in American LNG offtake, and 700,000 metric tons of US wheat annually.
The agreement was signed by a government with no electoral mandate, three days before the people it governed were given the chance to choose their own representatives. By what authority did an unelected administration bind the nation to these terms?
The republic’s right to know
An unelected government has no built-in accountability mechanisms. No parliament to answer to. No opposition to monitor its actions. That is precisely why the Yunus government bore a special obligation, a moral obligation, to be more transparent than any elected government could be expected to be.
Yet over 18 months, serious allegations of corruption and abuse of power were raised against several advisers. And they were met with little visible response.
TIB’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2025 showed Bangladesh’s score rising by only one point to 24, the second-lowest in 14 years. TIB stated that the interim government “failed to take effective and exemplary measures against corruption” and that money laundering had not stopped.
This is not a call for prosecution. It is a call for disclosure. Publish the full text and annexes of the trade agreement. Publish the vaccine procurement timeline. Publish the tax exemption list. Publish the chain of command on Dhanmondi 32.
If the documents show nothing, the interim government is vindicated. If they show something, the public learns what was done in its name. Disclosure does not require a tribunal. It requires a government willing to release paper.
The interim government is gone. But its decisions are not. The trade agreement runs for years. The tax exemptions run to 2029. The measles outbreak is ongoing. The demolition is permanent.
The silence of the current government on these matters is itself part of the story. Why has the new government not repealed the trade agreement, investigated the procurement, or pursued the Dhanmondi 32 case?
The audit demand is not directed only at Yunus. It is directed at whoever currently holds the power to disclose and chooses not to.
We call for a parliamentary commission to review every foreign agreement signed during this period. We call for the full list of tax exemptions received by Yunus and connected institutions to be made public. We call for a full accounting of the vaccine procurement decisions that led to the measles outbreak. The children who died deserve nothing less. And we call for an investigation into the demolition of Dhanmondi 32: Who gave the order, and why no one was held accountable.
These investigations are not intended to defame Yunus or his advisers. They are required in the interest of the nation itself. Examining this interim administration’s powers, responsibilities, and shortcomings can help establish a framework for future caretaker governments. We must assess where mistakes were made or limits exceeded so that similar problems can be avoided in the future.
The citizens of Bangladesh, who braved bullets in July 2024, who demanded democracy, who sacrificed for a better future, deserve nothing less.
They own this republic. They have a right to know what was done in their name during those 18 months when decisions were made in the dark.
The sun has risen on a new government. But shadows remain. Let us chase them out, together.
Zakir Kibria is a Bangladeshi writer, policy analyst and entrepreneur based in Kathmandu, Nepal. His email address is zakir.kibria@gmail.com. Views expressed are the writer’s own.