On February 28, 2025, Bangladesh witnessed the birth of the National Citizens Party (NCP), or Jatiya Nagorik Party (NJP) in Bengali. Emerging from the embers of the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement (ADSM)—the very force that toppled former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on August 5, 2024, the NCP represents both hope and uncertainty
The National Citizens Party (NCP) or Jatiya Nagorik Party (NJP) in Bengali, was born in Bangladesh on February 28, 2025. It is a progeny of the student leaders who spearheaded the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement (ADSM) that ousted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina from power on August 5, 2024, and the National Citizens Committee (NCP) or the Jatiya Nagorik Committee (JNC), that emerged from the same political cradle on September 8, 2024.
The country was pregnant with it for almost seven months. A report by Reuters, datelined August 16, 2024, and issued under the heading ‘Student protesters plan new party to cement their revolution,’ quoted Mahfuz Alam, who then chaired a committee charged with liaising between the interim government, which had assumed office on August 8, and groups like teachers and activists, that the decision to form such a party would be known in about a month. It further quoted Alam, who had been a key leader of the ADSM and is now an adviser to the interim government, as saying, “People are tired of the two political parties (obviously the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party). They trust in (sic) us.”
According to the report, Nahid Islam, another of ADSM’s important leaders, who resigned as an adviser on February 25 and is now the convener and leader of the NCP, said that the spirit of the students’ movement was to build a new Bangladesh where no fascist or autocrat could return. He had added, “To achieve that, we need structural reforms, which will undoubtedly require some time.” Nahid further stated that the government was not heeding calls by the Awami League and BNP to hold new elections as early as the fall (of 2024). Another Reuters’ report by Ruma Paul, Krishn Kaushik, Devjyot Ghoshal and Krishna N Das, carried under the headline “Insight: Bangladesh student protestors eye new party to cement their revolution” and datelined August 16, 2024, however, cited Alam as having said on Facebook that his statement to Reuters “had come out wrong” and that “We are not thinking about political organisations right now.”
The main focus was to maintain the spirit of the mass uprising and to consolidate the government. Others also expressed the same view.
Statements, denials and volte faces-nothing new in politics-often reflect tensions and conflicts kept under wraps. Was Alam under pressure to retract or deny his statement? One does not know. There, however, have been indications of differences among both leaders-called coordinators-and rank-and-file of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD), the moniker given to the organisation emerging out of the ADSM, even in the heady immediate aftermath of the formation of the interim government led by Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus.
Thus, a report in The Daily Star, datelined August 16, 2024, stated that a coordinator and four assistant coordinators of Chittagong University’s ADSM had resigned from their posts, alleging that the central coordinators took unilateral decisions and ignored their demands. According to another report in the Daily Star datelined January 3, 2025, eight persons were injured in Khulna town in a clash among ADSM supporters.
There have been several reports of internal conflicts and tensions. According to a report in Prothom Alo English, adherents of the ADSM blocked the Dhaka-Aricha highway for an hour on February 24, 2025, demanding the dissolution of the organisation’s new district committee announced earlier in the month. Not surprisingly, though a consensus was subsequently achieved, there have been reports of arguments and tensions over the naming of the NCP’s office-bearers and members of the central convening committee.
Wrangling and power struggles seem programmed into the genes of all political parties. In the case of the NCP, however, factional fissures are accompanied by the presence of incompatible ideologies.
The NJP includes alumni of the Shibir, Jatiotabadi Chhatradal (Bangladesh Nationalist Students Party) affiliated with the BNP, several students’ organisations of both leftist and fundamentalist Islamist outfits and those without any political involvement prior to joining the ADSM. They seem to be sticking together because they feel that the future belongs to the new party. What would happen when the latter loses its sheen with time? Signs of trouble are already manifest.
Questions have been asked as to how
the enormous amounts of funds needed to mobilise for the gargantuan rally that marked the NCP’s formation were found. According to a report in The Daily Star
datelined March 2, 2025, the Pirojpur district administration had requisitioned several privately owned buses to facilitate local students joining the NJP’s inaugural rally on February 28.
It was a partisan act and a grim pointer of this becoming a regular factor if the NJP comes to power.Besides, the declaration of the party’s vision for Bangladesh raises questions. It talks of a “cruel fascist” regime-obviously referring to Sheikh Hasina’s-ruling for 15 years, destroying state institutions and democracy, and making all-encompassing corruption and money laundering a part of state culture.
A lot of what it says-relief to marginalised and disadvantaged communities, the protection of fundamental rights, preserving ethnic, social, gender, and cultural diversity, and ensuring strong safeguards against poverty, inequality, and abuse of power-is unexceptionable.
One, however, wishes that it said more about the ‘Second Republic,’ which, and the enactment of a new constitution, are the party’s overarching goals. Also, one wonders as to how seriously are pronouncements to be taken, particularly because it says that the party is committed to a culture where justice replaces vengeance. It is liable to make the dead rise up laughing given the interim government’s relentless and savage persecution of Awami League leaders and supporters, conducted in blatant disregard of all
juridical fairness.
Will the NCP come to power following
the next parliamentary elections? It might have enjoyed a sweeping victory if an
election had been held immediately after Sheikh Hasina’s ouster, when its popularity was at its peak.
Since then, issues like a steep decline in the law-and-order situation, runaway inflation and economic instability have been eroding the public’s confidence in the interim government. Given the latter’s links with the founders of the new party, they too have started attracting a measure of cynicism, which is bound to be transferred to the NCP.
The latter will also meet growing challenges from parties like the BNP, which had their backs to the wall during Sheikh Hasina’s second innings as prime minister but are now flexing their political muscles.
Further, the NCP lacks a nationwide, grassroots-level political infrastructure and a leader with charisma and gravitas. Its leaders’ demands for not holding parliamentary elections until the reforms are completed and Sheikh Hasina is on the gallows are obviously ploys to gain time to build up its organisation. Time, however, takes its own toll even on the most resplendent of shrines. It cannot be otherwise with the NCP. Its leaders will do well to remember the saying, “Sic transit gloria mundi,” which literally translates as “thus passes the glory of the world” but is generally meant to convey that earthly glory is fleeting.
Bangaldesh: A backgrounder
A 17-member interim government, led by Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus as its chief advisor, took charge in Bangladesh on August 8, following the ouster of Sheikh Hasina. Hasina resigned as prime minister on August 5, following weeks of deadly student-led protests. Her ouster was followed by a chaos in Muslim-majority country of over 170 million people and it reverberated in neighbouring India.
Sheikh Hasina’s departure from Dhaka to neighbouring India resulted from months of growing anger in Bangladesh. After the January 2024 general election, perceived as flawed, critics accused Hasina’s government of becoming increasingly arrogant and serving its minions.
The turning point came in June 2024, when Bangladesh’s High Court re-instated a quota reserving 30 per cent of government jobs for relatives of veterans from Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence. With government jobs in high demand due to elevated graduate unemployment, students protested the quota, which they also viewed as favouring supporters of Hasina’s Awami League party.
The Supreme Court eventually reduced the quota in late July to 5 per cent. The reversal was too little, too late. Violence between the protestors and the police increased, further fuelled by Hasina’s refusal to release detained student leaders.
The protesters, viewing Hasina as responsible for the deaths of some 600 people killed in the clashes with the police, began seeking her overthrow.
To control the protests, Hasina announced a curfew, repeatedly shut down internet and jailed over 11,000 protesters. The army eventually withdrew its support after refusing Hasina’s order to open fire on civilians to enforce the curfew. On August 5, 2024, with a large number of angry protestors heading to her official residence, Hasina resigned and fled to India.
(The author is Consulting Editor, The Pioneer. The views expressed are personal)
