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Hassan isn't going to run in the next election; he's coming in as a caretaker, which is what he did in the last caretaker election about 20 years ago. But he's very explicitly a caretaker; he's not here to be a long-term political actor in Bangladesh. So why is it that then, why is it that it is necessary to have these people involved in the constitutional assembly?

First of all, the existing forces in politics benefited from each of these systems, all of their allies. They were put in place by the existing political system, so they're incredibly unlikely to want to change it. But secondly, without a force, without a specifically large institutional force against this, it's likely that any smaller forces that OG talk about, like individuals or small groups—two or three running—would be able to get this team through. They're likely to be bought off or horse-traded by the larger parties. They're less likely to have an agreement on what this reform should look like.

So even if they all agree there should be reform, if they don't agree on it, they're on net going to get outvoted. And also, they weren't involved in the creation of it. The student leaders got named Mohammad Hassan in that serve in roles with those commissions developing it, so they are the ones who are involved in development and can get it passed through.

Why is it that they can only get this done if they are a party? First of all, being a part of the party is necessary for branding and selling your campaign. Secondly, like elections, it's a big business. You need operatives, you need money, you need ads, you need institutional capacity. You can't do this as two or three individuals.

The next thing I want to prove is that other institutional power in Bangladesh is very, very rare because they keep going to other institutions. UN might support, but there's good and I ask them to name them; they can't. But there's good structural reasons to believe there aren't a lot of other large institutions in Bangladesh that could form themselves into political parties.

First of all, it was an authoritarian country. Secondly, the Awami League tried to position itself as a big tent party that included anyone, so they had an incentive to try and bring in any other institutions and align themselves with the Awami League. Thirdly, Bangladesh has been in chaos for many years. The initial protest against the quota system started in 2018, and in that context of chaos, it's very difficult to form institutional power.

So that means that there aren't a lot of other large institutions that could step into this gap. The best comparative, then, BNP or other smaller parties, opening government, says, "Well, students are seen as bad; they're seen as irrational; they're seen as too young." But the problem with this is that this party isn't just going to run students; they're going to bring other people in. For instance, they brought in Hanan in the short run.

Also, they brought in a large number of university professors who actually designed the original system of reform. They worked with their own professors and military leaders, as opening opposition points out, military leaders who told the military to put down their arms, not to oppose this. And those people have almost nothing in common except for the fact that they were brought together by an anti-discrimination students movement.

That is why they're likely to be taken seriously, and that also robs closing government, who, well, they're incredibly terrible, but they brought in a large amount of support. The key thing is that they are important for bringing those people together. I also want to note here, not only is it important that they're part of the constitutional assembly to solve all those problems, but it's also important that they are the first government afterwards.

Because, as I allude to, the entire Supreme Court of Bangladesh was forced to resign because they were seen as trying to bring back Sheikh Hasina. That means that they're going to get to appoint the next set of justices who will make the first interpretations of the new Constitution that will serve as the baseline precedent against which that Constitution is interpreted, and that's incredibly important.

They also set the norms of how it's interpreted, and if another party wins, they have an incentive to show that the new rules that they don't like are very bad and very difficult in order to manufacture consent to get them taken away. It's very important that they are not only involved in the right giver, but that they are the first party to interpret it and to appoint the justices who do so.

What are the benefits of this? It means that you get a government that functions, which is important for your economics. It also means you get rid of the quota system, right? Which is not only unitarily but also incredibly bad for the functioning of government because you appoint a large number of freedom fighters to the system, not because they're good.

And it crucially makes the Bangladesh Public Service not politically neutral because the freedom fighters that are appointed have political allegiances, and that means you don't have a neutral public service. That pretty much what way pretty intuitively over the rest of the debate.

Second extension: Why is it that you why is it that you get more stability? Opening government says you will get the military... See, opening opposition pretty concisely points out the military explicitly allows them to come through. You're very unlikely to get a military coup.

Why is it that the BNP would be incredibly bad? First of all, their leader, it's not clear he can legitimately run in charge on anti-corruption, and different courts are split over his actual legitimacy as a candidate. So that means that they're incredibly likely to be protests. Secondly, there's very likely to be huge protests when this aggressively pro-Muslim party wins, who has done terrible things to minorities in the past.

Thirdly, your relationship with India is likely to be substantially worse, and they're likely to foment unrest on the ground. We already saw Indian forces in the country protecting Sheikh Hasina during the last revolution, and they have an incentive to foment chaos in the country in order to reestablish their influence.

And I know these aren't the only reasons why you don't get stability. There are also reasons why the BNP is bad; like they are anti-Hindu, we should care about Hindus. They are anti-India; we should care about your relationship with India, your trade relationship, your security relationship. They have done corruption which is not only rampant, you can't legitimately run, but also you know corruption is bad.

Additionally, I think it's important that these student leaders are there to be able to tamp down protests. Opening opposition says, "Well, the student leaders might do protests," but I think that's the lower impact argument because their protests, on net, have been pretty good and pretty reasonable.

What's more important is the bad, more aggressive sets of protests that might come from other actors, which we think they're uniquely good at tamping down and stopping from becoming violent. First of all, we will still lie true if these people don't follow through on their promises. Secondly, they are powerful figures who can come out persuasively and urge people to calm down. But thirdly, the protests are more willing to negotiate with them.
When they're in government, because they have a history of being receptive to protest, rather than, they will never listen," this protest will never work.
</mo>

<gw>
First, I'll explain why closing government wins the debate, and secondly, why the opposition bench loses. Firstly, why did we win the debate? I think we make kind of two contributions. The first is just explaining in substantial detail why these student leaders would be both bad at politics, but also, perhaps more importantly, good at civil society and impacting why that is a society and politics changing for us. The second, I think, is just outlining that most of these specific demands of the anti-discrimination student movement, in their highly publicized 9o P published like after deposing the cner, are bad.

Of course, as this team might respond, some of those demands are like fine. For instance, asking for compensation for families of protesters who were killed—that's fine. But those kinds of demands are not sensationalist, nor are they radical. They're extremely unlikely to focus on campaigns of opposition or media, the things that they are held to by phoners and that are indeed in the spotlight in the media at the moment. Many of those demands are incredibly bad things, like firing huge tracks of police who are related to the universities or whose jurisdiction covers the universities where protest was suppressed.

Even if those police were not directly involved, like they didn't kill a person, they just have jurisdiction over those universities. No security in universities, firing Huge CRA ofc, and a national ban on the Awami League unit. I think those policies are bad in a few respects. Firstly, I would oppose many of them on face value on their grounds alone. For instance, I don't think you should ban student movements of most political parties until they pass you an extremely high threshold. I think that is probably something we should be conservative about—not restricting free speech.

I think police, who are often underpaid and not personally responsible for violence against students, who happen to be part of a systemically corrupt institution but don't have much choice in that, should not be fired from their jobs. I think those are immoral demands, and we should not stand for them. Secondly, those demands are literally impossible to fulfill. As Ellie points out, to no response, powerful enemies in the form of the whole police force is incredibly scary.

This doesn't work, which at very worst for us is just an enormous opportunity cost of resources, a failure to get your policies passed. But also, my group is incredibly embarrassing and delegitimizing for these student protests and for all the civil society organizations and movements that we point out are attached to, where they can do good work out of politics. Maybe, for instance, you want to go into politics later. You can't; you have an initial track record of doing terrible things and failing to pass a policy.

The responsible get from opening opposition in a POI is, firstly, well, if there's a risk of a coup, then you moderate. I think Ellie preempts this in quite a lot of detail. We explain that you aren't rational, but it's very unlikely that there's a risk of a coup on their side. You're not thinking about the future in that extent. That it's incredibly embarrassing and maybe, for instance, backlash or political violence in the short term to backtrack on your established demands.

And importantly, even if some people are rational in this way, the most prominent leaders of that movement will not be. The second plan they make is if you don't moderate, you're going to lose the election. But firstly, I would note if that harms the movement of anti-authoritarian student protesters, regardless, even if it's true that you lose the election by having these demands, it still hurts that movement. It hurts, for instance, initial movements by students, any student in Bangladesh against corruption, against authoritarianism in the future—they are tainted with that brush, which it is incredibly easy for opposition parties and media outlets to keep up on.

But secondly, maybe at the very best, this hurts OG, but it doesn't hurt us because we explain why involvement in civil society matters. And importantly, you can also run more successfully for politics later. For instance, you could run more successfully for politics later if you're hard with this brush. If, for instance, you have demands that are bad, that means that you can't operate in civil society as well. But finally, I think some people probably still do win.

And I want to know if even if you only get one politician representing this constituency in Parliament, you cause huge amounts of chaos. You shift the Overton window; you mean that people discredit other more sensible leaning policies, like restrictions on police powers. That there's gridlock in Parliament—all of that is terrible. Why does this then get us above opening government? I think it represents a fairly generic criticism of young revolutionaries on the basis of their radicalism, but also the tempting vices of politics like corruption.

But the problem with this is, firstly, claims in terms of entire commitments to corruption, while true, seem relatively symmetric given the features that this team themselves points out in terms of the political system in Bangladesh at large. But secondly, radicalism, of course, as our open says, can be bad but can also be good, right? Like deeply radical movements, like, for instance, anti-colonial movements or feminism, are both good ideologically but are deeply attractive to people, even though they ask for very large changes in the status quo.

We explain that the changes we're asking for are bad, which means they are both unpopular but also undesirable. But finally, we impact the alternative. Civil society not just politics, which makes society and makes government better—we win.

Let's now talk about opening opposition. Opening opposition, I think, is dangerously pessimistic in their vision of the status quo. They say the BNP will have no political competition without students to push back. The reason for this is because it's prohibitively hard for the youth to vote. The BNP receives money from lobbyists; they'll always get young people on their side. Students don't. This is dangerous because it's a self-defeating argument for opening opposition. If the BNP is so powerful, then students contesting elections will fail regardless.

One attempt to bridge this gap is to say, well, people care a lot about youth and revolution. Now you have to take that opportunity. That is insufficient for a few reasons. Firstly, it could last that momentum, right? Like if you present yourself as political critics, part of civil society, it is likely that the actual authoritarian momentum will lose. But secondly, if opening opposition is right that there is an appetite for change, that doesn't mean there's an appetite for supporting this specific political party, especially because their power is in opposing the AL, not in creating and endorsing their own political platform, which I know requires many different skills and virtues.

Finally, they say the BNP has a textile contract, which is bad. One, this is self-correcting; yes, lobbying is powerful, but votes matter from individual people whose wages are going down. There are other competing businesses that join, like eristic contracts with fire. Or secondly, if the textile industry is so corrupt, then that means that other parties who are established also need money and also take that money.

Finally, let's probe about closing opposition. Firstly, they say the young people in politics will help the future political system in terms of changes to the Constitution. One, it's unlikely that those young people are elected or listened to. If they are elected, for the reasons we give, they don't have the ads of the institutional capacities that this team describes as necessary; that is overpowering. Secondly, Yunus has decreased corruption massively, and it's likely that its oversight, as the caretaker government, will make sure that the special assembly is good, that it's not done corruptly, and so on.

But finally, they say, well, the students have united lots of different parts of society. That's true with regards to taking down the AL; it's not true with regards to rewriting the Constitution, where you want usually different interests. If you are the military as opposed to if you are students. They say next that the BNP will fail. Firstly, in your opening, he says they guarantee success no matter what. But secondly, the barriers they put up are transitory. They say the leader is bad; you get a new one again. Yunus has massively decreased corruption in Bangladesh.

They say your relationship with India is bad. I'll fit that; it's way worse. Because India hated the student protesters, sent police to target them and bring them down. Is your relationship with India, or rather, does it hurt it? Because obviously, India doesn't like the student protesters; it doesn't like it when the special assembly supports them and has them in their midst.
</gw>

<ow>
The youth leaders win elections, and secondly, on policy, they implement when they win, good or bad. Firstly, on youth leaders, whether they'll win elections, the first problem, the first reason why I think this is pretty obvious that we explained is that they have already proven themselves to be highly effective political organizers. This seems dismissive about the amount of effort required; it is the protest place for long periods of time and involves more than just organizing people on the street, but organizing highly complex networks of people who cooperate around an infrastructure system that cracks down on those students.

And then after that, being able to negotiate the process of establishing a relatively democratic transitional government in order to manage the process of moving towards democracy and establishing a series of missions in order to do it and analyze the problems that existed in the previous system, which could suggest to you that these protesters are efficient organizers and are likely to be good at winning elections. Secondly, we think the BNP themselves have lost a lot of institutional knowledge without winning elections.

I think that while they are probably likely to be effective, they're unlikely to be unbeatable. That is firstly because they've been disempowered by the Awami League; they've been in long-term opposition for decades and suggest they haven't had that much infrastructure around. Secondly, and additionally, they've boycotted elections for a long period of time; the infrastructure around elections has likely been lost.

Now, for opening opposition, we agree with opening opposition that in the counteract without students, it's likely that this BNP is going to win the election without student opposition. What Matt says is not that this is never going to happen, but that if it did happen, it would be bad because the BNP isn't a whole party. Thirdly, their unpopular policies are outweighed by a series of very popular features. That is firstly coming from outside the establishment because, although it's true that people have some skepticism about the group of students and whether or not they'll be anti-democratic, they know for certain that the BNP has been corrupt.

It's led by a person who is currently being charged for money laundering; its previous experience has been previously called out for corruption, which guarantees them some amount of legitimacy. Secondly, the people in Bangladesh want democracy. Living in a dictatorship, having at least one party that is working hard towards democracy is a meaningful draw for people, even if they have a series of unpopular policies.

Thirdly, the students aren't a super racialized religious party, which is a characteristic of the BNP that has alienated a lot of people in Bangladesh, who see that racialization as something that causes division, escalates tensions in the region of India, and is detrimental towards the likelihood of getting trade and economic development in the future. Finally, they're not children; these are university students—well, pretty old university students—who have been politically organizing for a long time and who have experience in some level of politics at the youth level.

People are likely to be adept. Let's do some way; so, it says it won't work. This is obviously going to be a hard thing to achieve, but now is the best time to achieve it of any time in the future. The Awami League is split; the Awami League is on the run, and their leader has left India. They lack a firm alternative towards the leader, someone who can organize them. They have a lot of momentum at the moment, and the BNP is at a critical point where it is also unlikely to succeed for the reasons that I previously explained about the lack of infrastructure around elections.

So now is the only time that it could work, and that's when it's in so rearing around the likelihood. Then I think we do prove the highlight of success; in fact, this is considered by the Prime Minister, who claims that they will be so popular and unbeatable, they will have unchecked power, which will result in them becoming evil, which therefore makes government a knife of hope.

But secondly, even if they don't, it's still good for them to have some level of power. Firstly, because it makes better accountability on the BNP and the Awami League if they are the ones to end up in power. But secondly, it's a boost for building momentum towards future political successes as you build institutional knowledge around elections and toward the future.

Next, let's talk about whether or not their policies are bad. They outline that some of these policies might have negative consequences. Firstly, many people who they want to remove from power are extremely unpopular. For example, police commissioners in Bangladesh are notorious for being permissive of things like police officers engaging in violence and engaging in rape; they are people who others also want to see removed.

Secondly, it's often necessary to remove these figures in order to remove corruption. A lot of these people are aligned with corrupt political figures from the Awami League, which makes removing them necessary in order to disrupt the infrastructure that allows corruption to continue. Because even if you change who's in power and the BNP comes into power, if you permit the lower levels of corruption to continue to permeate the system, the BNP then becomes the corrupt political party that's in power.

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