Bangladesh’s new Parliament has completed the formation of its 50 standing committees. The opposition chairs one: the Public Accounts Committee, headed by Jamaat-e-Islami’s Syed Abdullah Mohammed Taher. The ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party controls the other 49. In a country whose recent political upheaval was supposed to end the habit of treating victory as ownership of the state, the distribution offers an unusually clear measure of how much has changed.

The dispute is partly about a number. Opposition leaders say an understanding that reflected their roughly 26 percent share of Parliament should also have given them a comparable share of committee chairmanships. Government figures have contested that interpretation, distinguishing committee membership from the right to chair a committee. They also point to Bangladesh’s longstanding practice of reserving almost every chairmanship for the governing party. That defence may be historically accurate. It is less persuasive as an argument for a government elected on a promise to reform precisely such practices.

Parliamentary committees matter because they are among the few places where legislators can scrutinise ministries in detail. Giving the opposition a seat allows it to ask questions. Giving it a chairmanship allows it to help decide which questions receive sustained attention. When Jamaat lawmakers left the chamber after another ten committees were formed under BNP chairs on September 2, Taher accused the government of turning its majority into the only rule that counted. The government had the votes to make its choices. That is also why the choices deserve scrutiny.

The same pattern extends beyond Parliament. In March, the government appointed BNP figures as administrators of 42 district councils: 11 from the party’s central leadership and 31 from its district organisations. By August, party leaders were administering 63 district councils and 11 city corporations. These are bodies normally led by elected local representatives, yet a clear timetable for local elections has still not emerged. The appointments give the BNP a presence in local administration while voters wait for the chance to choose who governs it.

A temporary administrator may be necessary when an elected office is vacant. Filling those posts so extensively with party figures makes the word temporary do considerable work. It also gives Jamaat and the National Citizen Party an obvious line of attack: that control of local institutions is being secured before local contests are held. Their allegations about the government’s electoral intentions remain allegations. The political advantage created by the appointments is visible without accepting every claim the opposition makes.

The appointments to state enterprises and public bodies raise a related question. BNP leaders have taken senior positions across organisations concerned with transport, industry and public services. Any one appointee might be qualified. Collectively, the selections invite a test the BNP itself set in its election manifesto: it pledged to judge appointments on competence, experience and integrity, without regard to party loyalty. A government cannot expect that pledge to retain much force if party affiliation repeatedly appears to be the most reliable qualification.

Transparency International Bangladesh has warned of a retreat from institutional reform, singling out the politicisation of local administration alongside concerns about appointments to other public offices. That warning addresses the structure of decision-making without adopting the opposition’s claim that every appointment is part of an electoral conspiracy.

Even the presidency has exposed the distance between reform language and political practice. BNP veteran Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir won the parliamentary vote by 255 to 88 against Oli Ahmad, the candidate backed by the Jamaat-led alliance. The result was unsurprising given the BNP’s majority. The controversy lay in Article 70, whose constraints on MPs voting against their parties renewed questions about earlier promises to give legislators greater independence. Reform had been offered as a way to loosen party control over Parliament. When the presidency was decided, that control remained central to the contest.

None of this makes the BNP’s election victory illegitimate, nor does it make Jamaat an impartial guardian of pluralism. The issue is what a parliamentary majority entitles a party to do after winning. The BNP can point to precedent for retaining committee chairs, to administrative vacancies in local government and to the legal authority to make appointments. Taken together, however, those explanations describe the very system its reform promises led voters to expect it would change.

Bangladesh’s political transition will be judged less by the language of its charters and manifestos than by who is permitted to exercise power between elections. So far, committee oversight, local administration and a growing set of public appointments have flowed toward the governing party. The opposition’s protests may be partisan. They have nevertheless identified a real danger: a country can replace the party in power while leaving the habits of the party state remarkably intact.