In looking for answers, much of the current discourse has put emphasis on people, the players of the game, rather than on institutions, the rules of the game.

That's understandable. Yes, the past five years have given us a painful circus of corrupt politicians, including shameless BNP MPs who would stoop as low as stealing relief materials meant for victims of natural disasters.

Accordingly, the law adviser is promising swift justice for the corrupt. The army chief is pronouncing that politicians are the roots of the country's ills, as if the country had never experienced military rule. Foreign diplomats have also joined the bandwagon, calling for a purge.

Indeed, there seems to be an uncritical consensus about this: kick out the old guard, and bring in new faces-honest, apolitical do-ers who can put national interest ahead of everything else.

The celebrated Dr. Yunus, riding the crest of this wisdom, has set aside his past disdain for politics and declared an ambition for national power.

The problem is, a change of guard will only address the symptoms, not the disease. The route to our political salvation is not in another national celebrity.

If anything, politics in Bangladesh has been choked dry for the last thirty-six years by larger-than-life cults of personality and their dynastic tentacles. Moreover, it's not even the national interest that we need served. What we need instead is to bring politics closer to serving local constituencies.

In political science, which is the subject I teach, the idea is simple: the heart of a representative democracy (like Bangladesh) is not in governance, nor in leadership, nor even in the holding of elections.

Its heart is in the representation of constituencies. What is being represented can vary.

The eighteenth-century philosopher Edmund Burke, for instance, believed that representatives should serve the interests, but not necessarily the will, of their constituencies.

Regardless, what is important is that politicians are there to be driven first and foremost by their local constituencies.

To adapt Lincoln's remark, they should be of the locals, by the locals, for the locals.

But in Bangladesh, a vicious cycle of barriers keeps genuine local leaders out of any meaningful political authority.

Let's examine the steps in this cycle. We start with celebrities who gain national prominence by hook, crook, or family ties, become inducted into central leadership, and then, only for the purpose of getting elected, choose to "represent" a local constituency.

Come election time, the top leaders run in multiple constituencies.

This not only stifles local voice but presupposes that local candidates are not good enough, a condescending viewpoint given to us by Britain, where, not surprisingly, most laws introduced by "commoners" need approval by Lords. Moreover, it is the central leadership, not local supporters, who nominates other MP candidates from their party.

This process serves to reward loyalty over merit.

Once elected, MPs cannot vote against their party, which reduces the parliamentary process to that of a glorified debating club.

This rule also favours loyalty over merit and the interests of central leadership over that of local constituencies.

And finally, if the rank and file wants to change the leadership, it runs into a brick wall because no democracy exists within the major parties.

Parties hold national conventions, but they are irregular, and given the absence of any rotation requirement, used mostly to rubberstamp the same pre-selected central leaders.

The upshot of all this is that regardless of a change of guard, the rules of the game will eventually result in the domination of politics by a few national-level celebrity figures.

Cronyism, subservience, and hero worship, instead of accountability and transparency, will continue to be the likely by-products.

These rules need to be reformed in order to strengthen true representation. The notion to register political parties is a good move, and this can be used as a vehicle to force reforms within parties.

For example, if a party wants to participate in national democratic elections, the registration agreement should require the establishment of democracy within the party first, including clear rules about intra-party election and, importantly, rotation in party leadership.

In addition, parties should be required to let local constituencies decide who their MP candidate would be.

Whether it is formalized like American primaries or not can be up to each party, but for representative democracy to work, local leaders must be allowed to compete fairly and rise up.

Nomination is not a democratic institution.

Additionally, parliamentary rules need to be modified. There needs be a cap on leadership: two terms should be the maximum that a Prime Minister can serve.

Most importantly, MPs must be allowed to vote "with their conscience," that is, against their party if needed. Allowing vote across party lines would make central leadership more accountable, and also more serious about resolving both intra-party and national issues, as they would always be in fear of defection by MPs who represent their local constituencies above the interests of central leadership.

North Korea's "Great Leader" Kim Il-Sung, long dead, nevertheless continues to hold the post of president, which has been bequeathed permanently to him. Our politics, similarly, has hovered around great leaders, national personalities, and their legacies, but with dreadful consequences.

Putting faith in another round of newly inducted national leaders, no matter how honest and capable they may seem now, will be a mistake, a disregard of lessons that our turbulent political history has taught us time and again.

We should welcome new faces from the grassroots, but more importantly, we should think more seriously about institutional reforms to ensure that national politics becomes rooted firmly to the interests and needs of local constituencies, and represented through local leadership, so that at the end of the day, power remains dispersed.

Dr. Jalal Alamgir is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA.