The results show how difficult it is for youth parties to convert street enthusiasm into votes in the elections held after the fall of Sheikh Hasina's government in a mass movement led by Gen-G or Generation Z. This information has emerged in a Reuters report.
In Bangladesh's election, the National Citizens Party (NCP), formed by young people, won only 6 seats in the 300-seat parliament. In contrast, voters chose the long-established Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The party has governed the country three times, its last term was from 2001-2006.
A sense of distrust due to alliances
Many NCP supporters say that the NCP was effectively eliminated from the race because of its alliance in December with another long-standing political force, the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, known as an Islamist party.
Initially, the party planned to field candidates in 300 seats, but ultimately contested only 30 seats under the alliance. The NCP claims that it joined the alliance because it felt the support of a bigger force was needed after a coup leader was killed in Dhaka.
However, according to analysts, the NCP has failed to build enough public support before the elections.
Sohanur Rahman, a 23-year-old university student, said that the NCP could not fulfill the hopes and aspirations of the people after the 2024 coup.
He said that the NCP's alliance with Jamaat seemed like a big betrayal to many young voters like us, so we have decided not to support them.
One of the six NCP winners in this election is 32-year-old lawyer and party joint secretary Abdullah Al Amin. He said that his party had hoped to win more seats. He claims that they lost in many seats by very small margins.
Abdullah Al Amin said the NCP won these seats because of its alliance with Jamaat. But Shakil Ahmed, a professor of government and politics at Jahangirnagar University, said the alliance had alienated young voters who had wanted to see a whole new political class emerge after Sheikh Hasina's fall.
NCP spokesman Asif Mahmud said the party would reconstitute itself from the opposition camp and focus on local government elections due in a year.
Reuters reported that NCP chief Nahid Islam had said in December that the party had not had enough time to regroup. Lack of funding and an unclear stance on key issues such as women's and minority rights have also held the party back.
A notable loser among the young candidates in this election was 31-year-old doctor Tasneem Zara. She left the NCP in December to contest as an independent candidate from Dhaka in protest against the alliance.
Zara won more than 44,000 votes but lost by a large margin to the BNP candidate. "We have shown that it is possible to win people's hearts with a clean and honest campaign," he said. "But our limitations have also become clear."
The number of votes received has given me hope and Zara said she would not return to the medical profession in Britain. "Our best days are still ahead," she said.
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