Bangladesh’s National Citizen Party: Old wine in new bottle?

On February 28, Bangladesh saw the birth of a new political party named the National Citizen Party (NCP). The party initially formed a 151-member national convening committee—later expanded to a 217-member committee—with Nahid Islam as the convenor. It has to be mentioned that Nahid Islam recently resigned from the post of advisor for Information and Broadcasting in the Muhammad Yunus-led interim government.

Party led by the anti-Hasina student protestors

The new party is formed by the students of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD) and Jatiyo Nagorik Committee (JNC). It has to be mentioned that it was the SAD that led the July uprisings last year against the then Sheikh Hasina-led government. The movement, now referred to as the “monsoon revolution” in the country, ended the 15-year rule of the Awami League (AL) and ousted Sheikh Hasina, who had to flee the country on August 5 and since then has been living as a refugee in a hidden place in India.

After the change of power through street protests and the formation of the interim government led by Nobel laureate Yunus, the Jatiyo Nagorik Committee (JNC) was formed by the SAD as a platform to facilitate the reconstruction of the country’s political system.

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Since the 1990s, Bangladesh has been dominated by the two parties—five-time prime minister Hasina’s Awami League (AL) and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Khaleda Zia, who also has held the post of PM twice. No other party has been able to emerge in the last few decades as the dominant party challenging the AL-BNP binary, which, however, was turned into a single-party system by Hasina in the last decade.

Now after August 5, 2024, there is a political vacuum in the country. There have been signs of hardline Islamists led by Jamaat-e-Islami trying to come into power in the country by taking advantage of the current situation. NCP—posing as a centrist tent with people from the left as well as Islamists—is formed to fill that vacuum, as in politics a vacuum doesn’t last long.

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Given the current scenario of Bangladesh, it is natural that the formation of NCP—despising dynastic politics, a common feature seen in both AL and BNP—is bound to generate hope among the people, particularly because it is led by youth. It is natural for the people to be hopeful that new blood will bring a change in the country’s political system, which otherwise hasn’t been able to perform up to the mark since the birth of the country in 1971.

While the new party has given hope to many Bangladeshis, as evident from the editorials and opinions published in the dailies of Bangladesh, there remain doubts of these hopes translating into reality. This is because Nahid Islam, who is the national convenor of the party, has been in the Yunus-led interim government since its formation in August.

In fact, Yunus became the head of the government after he was supported by the student group SAD, which has now formed the new party. As a result, the new party can’t dissociate itself from the interim government, despite the resignation of Nahid. Importantly, till the time of writing this piece, two from the SAD are still part of the Yunus government.

Initially, the Yunus-led interim government had generated hopes among the Bangladeshi people. However, the interim government, which has to remain in power till a new government is elected democratically, has started strengthening its grip on power as days pass and is yet to declare elections on the pretext of bringing political reforms.

While the Yunus government strengthened its hold, the euphoria it generated started dissipating with law and order taking a backseat and the price rise of essential items hitting the common people. There were allegations that the Yunus-led interim government, installed by the SAD group, was delaying the elections in the name of political reforms only to give time to the SAD and JNC groups to form their own political party. With the formation of the new party NCP by SAD and JNC, these allegations got strengthened.

NCP: Old wine in a new bottle?

While the new party is trying to show itself as the centrist party and has also given representations to Hindu minority leaders in its 217-member national convening committee, how long it will be able to tackle the Islamists remains a concern, despite the party openly saying that it won’t be another Islamist party. These worries are genuine.

There has been a rise of attacks against Hindus after the exit of Hasina, and Yunus’ government has failed to curb the attacks. Instead, Yunus’ government has blamed the Indian media for “exaggerating” the attacks on Hindus. The Yunus government’s claims, however, were exposed by the fact-finding team of the United Nations.

The team mentioned that minority Hindus as well as Buddhists were attacked, including their places of worship. This negates the claims of Yunus’ government that Hindus were targeted mostly because of their political allegiance to AL. If that were the case, the Hindu worship places wouldn’t have been targeted.

It has to be mentioned that SAD and JNC—the groups that formed NCP—supported the propaganda that attacks against Hindus were mostly due to political reasons and were “exaggerated” by Indian media. This indicates that NCP, despite tall claims of being a centrist party, is on the way to becoming just like another party in the country with Islamist tendencies. The party’s Islamist tendencies became more clear when it removed gay activist Muntashir Rahaman after initially including him in the national convening committee. The party removed him to satisfy the Islamists, who are within and outside the party.

The parties of Bangladesh bowing to the diktats of Islamists is a continuation of the political tradition. In the past, it was seen how the dominant parties—whether it’s AL or BNP—had supported Islamist groups either by allying with Islamist parties or by incorporating Islamist leaders into the party. So, what’s new in the new party, NCP?

The stand of the student leaders against participation of AL and its allies like Jatiya Party also seems to raise eyebrows. True that the way of handling the student protests by Hasina last July, resulting in hundreds of deaths, can never be supported in a democracy. However, by not supporting the democratic idea to allow AL and its allies to contest elections, what’s the example the NCP is trying to set? How is this mindset different from the anti-democratic approach followed by the Sheikh Mujibur Rahman-led AL after the foundation of Bangladesh followed by the Ziaur Rahman-led BNP in the late 1970s or by the Mohammad Ershad-led Jatiya Party in the 1980s and the Hasina-led AL in the 2010s and 2020s?

Let the people of Bangladesh decide their own future through free and fair elections. If NCP is really interested in strengthening democracy in Bangladesh, whose political system has often failed to conduct free and fair elections barring the 1991, 1996, 2001, and 2008 general elections, the party should conduct its policies based on democracy and pluralism by ignoring the pressures of Islamic fundamentalist forces. Failure to do so will make NCP another party just like AL, BNP, and Jatiya Party.

The writer is a political commentator. He tweets @SagarneelSinha. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.