Bangladesh’s Gen Z politics
What Happens Next May Define the Country’s Democractic Systems
When students poured onto the streets of Dhaka in the summer of 2024, few imagined that within eighteen months, their leaders would be sitting in parliament. Fewer still imagined who they would be sitting next to.
The February 12 elections, widely described as the world’s first “Gen Z-inspired” election, returned the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to power after years under Sheikh Hasina. But the vote also produced something unprecedented: the world’s first Gen Z political party, the National Citizen Party (NCP), whose candidates became the first Gen Z protest leaders elected as Members of Parliament. Six seats out of 300. A foothold, not a mandate, and already complicated by the alliances made to get there.
Nahid Islam was 26 when he stepped to a microphone at Dhaka’s Shaheed Minar on August 3, 2024, and called for Hasina’s removal. Student-led demonstrations had begun over a job quota system reserving civil-service posts for descendants of 1971 liberation war veterans. When the government moved to crush protesters with lethal force, the backlash increased, turning a youth-led revolt into a nationwide movement that brought down her regime within days.
The NCP was established on 28 February 2025 as the first student-led political party in Bangladesh’s history. Its manifesto was titled “Youth and Dignity’s Manifesto.” Islam explained: “The main challenge and opportunity for the future is how we can channel the energy of the youth to work for the state.” The party had initially planned to contest nearly all 300 seats. It ended up contesting 30.
The reason comes down to one decision: allying with Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami. Jamaat played a controversial role during the 1971 Liberation War, opposing Bangladesh’s independence and coordinating with Pakistani forces. More than a dozen senior NCP leaders resigned within a week of the announcement, arguing the coalition was fundamentally incompatible with the inclusive values that shaped the uprising.
Young voters were unforgiving. “The NCP’s alignment with Jamaat felt like a betrayal, and many young voters like us chose not to support them,” said Sohanur Rahman, a 23-year-old university student. Analysts warned that unless the NCP rebuilds its identity, it risks remaining a symbolic movement rather than a major political force.
Bangladesh’s story sits within a pattern reshaping politics across the region. The 2024 protests are widely cited as the first successful Gen Z revolution in the world, inspiring similar movements across Nepal, Indonesia, the Philippines, and beyond, a wave some analysts have termed an “Asian Spring.” In 2025, youth protests in Kathmandu forced the collapse of Nepal’s government, with 77 people killed before early elections were called. Those elections brought 35-year-old former rapper Balendra Shah to office as Nepal’s youngest-ever prime minister.
The conditions are consistent across borders: a generation facing high unemployment, rising costs, and exclusion from policymaking has discovered that collective action can move governments. Yet even movements that successfully ousted governments have struggled to translate protest into effective governance. The NCP’s arc — from revolution to junior coalition partner in under two years — illustrates that gap as sharply as any case in the region.
The elections have sharpened a tension running through Bangladeshi politics for decades. Islamist parties mobilised visibly ahead of February 12, establishing themselves as significant players. Although Bangladesh’s founding constitution emphasised secularism, subsequent changes enshrined Islam as the state religion — a shift whose implications remain contested. For minority communities and secular activists, the question is whether the opening of political space will extend equally to all.
Islam, now serving as chief whip of the opposition alliance, acknowledged the difficulty ahead. “We wanted to change the president, change the constitution — big things — and in small things such as bureaucratic reform, we faced a lot of obstacles,” he said of his time in the Yunus caretaker government.
Six seats in a 300-seat parliament is a narrow base. Whether the NCP can grow beyond it, without losing what made it matter in the first place, is one of the defining questions now facing Bangladesh’s new democracy.