Students who played a major role in ousting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government last year have announced the formation of a new political faction which aims to shake up the political landscape in the South Asian country.
The National Citizen Party (NCP) will be headed by Nahid Islam, one of the best-known protest leaders.
Until recently, he served as an adviser to the interim government — led by the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus — that took charge of Bangladesh after Hasina’s exit.
Addressing a public rally in the capital Dhaka on Friday, Islam said, “We believe the July 2024 uprising initiated the fight towards a second republic. By writing a new democratic constitution, we must eliminate any possibility of future constitutional autocracy.”
Bangladesh has been grappling with political infighting since Hasina fled following weeks of mass, anti-government protests during which over 1,000 people were killed. Hasina currently remains in self-imposed exile in neighboring India.
Breaking the political duopoly
Since gaining independence from Pakistan in 1971, two parties — Hasina’s Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of her rival Khaleda Zia — have dominated Bangladeshi politics, while smaller leftist and Islamic parties have struggled to gain significant voter support.
The AL and the BNP have governed the country for most of the past three decades.
And they have been accused of widespread corruption and authoritarianism as well as failing to act on issues such as systemic inequality, discrimination and social injustice.
Many Bangladeshis hope the new, youth-led party will now reshape the political landscape.
Masud Kamal, a Dhaka-based political analyst, said Bangladeshis have so far had limited options on the ballot.
“The emergence of a third or fourth force could provide much-needed relief for the electorate,” he told DW. However, he is uncertain whether the NCP will achieve electoral success.
Fractious politics
Politics in Bangladesh are notoriously fractious. NCP representative Akhtar Hossain has said his party emphasizes “participatory politics” and rejects both Islamophobia and religious extremism in Muslim-majority Bangladesh.
“In Bangladesh, we’ve seen Islamophobia on one side and extremism on the other,” he said. “We don’t want this kind of politics in our party. We’re advocating for participatory politics, where the civic dignity of people is the primary concern.”
Political analyst Kamal said the NCP still lacks a clear ideology, which he described as a “weakness.”
“I don’t understand the new party’s policy or its ideology,” he told DW, adding: “They talk about participatory politics, but almost all the party leaders are students from Dhaka University. Yet, the mass uprising included workers, farmers, rickshaw pullers, and even housewives.”
He also cast doubt on the new party’s popularity. “Calculating a voter base based on social media popularity is a foolish approach,” Kamal noted.
“A lot of people in remote areas of Bangladesh are quite angry about the activities of the newcomers. I think if the NCP contests the elections without forming an alliance, it will stand in third or fourth place in terms of seats,” he stressed.
Disagreements between NCP and BNP
With Hasina’s Awami League weakened by her ouster, its traditional rivals from the BNP have emerged as the most powerful party in the country.
And the BNP is also likely to be the NCP’s toughest opponent in the next general election, which is expected to take place in late 2025 or early 2026.
Samantha Sharmin from the new NCP party recently criticized the BNP, without naming it, for being an obstacle to “unity.”
“All our efforts to create national unity after the fall of Sheikh Hasina have been thwarted and obstructed by a party that considers itself the biggest party in Bangladesh,” she told DW last week.
The BNP has rejected the allegations, stating that it is focused on contesting the next elections and returning power to the people.
BNP politician Harunur Rashid welcomed the formation of the NCP but doesn’t see it as posing a challenge for his party.
“BNP has proven itself to the people. The NCP needs to wait a long time to gain the momentum to compete with us,” he said.
There are also disagreements between the NCP and the BNP over the elections, with NCP leaders calling for electing a new constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, while the BNP is favor of holding parliamentary elections first.
Banning the Awami League?
Furthermore, the NCP wants the interim government to ban Hasina’s Awami League, a demand that has so far not been supported by the BNP. The more established party has maintained that elections must decide the AL’s fate.
Sharmin has slammed the BNP’s stance, saying that it’s tantamount to “playing with the people’s emotions,” “betraying the spirit of the 2024 uprising,” and “keeping the otherwise irrelevant Awami League’s hopes alive.”
Kamal warned that excluding the Awami League from elections could actually lead to a disaster for the NCP, as the AL’s share of the vote — somewhere between 30% and 35% — might shift to the BNP, potentially making it the largest party in Bangladeshi history.
Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru