In Bangladesh, students won a revolution. They are desperate for more.
At the vanguard of Gen Z movements, protesters in Bangladesh ousted the prime minister in 2024. They now face the hard reality of winning change through elections.
Even before the votes are cast on Thursday in the first general elections since millions of protesters toppled the country’s authoritarian government in 2024, at least one sign of change is visible on the streets of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Its police uniforms, which were once green and blue, are now gray and brown.
The swap, made in November, was meant to distance the officers from the brutal crackdown on student protesters that ended in more than 1,400 deaths. These protest leaders are now concerned that their movement for democratic reform may not progress beyond this costume change. We were against changing the dresses. We want to change the system, the structure,” said Tanjina Tammim Hapsa, an activist at the University of Dhaka.
In a way, the election in Bangladesh is a test case for whether student movements in other parts of the world, like the Gen-Z uprising in September in Nepal, the student protests in Kenya in June, and many of the recent protests in Iran, can bring about long-term change. In July 2024, young people in Bangladesh, a tiny neighbor of India with over 175 million people and a median age of about 25, took to the streets to protest a system that reserved jobs for the descendants of Bangladesh’s freedom fighters.
But when Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, ordered the crackdown on protesters, their anger over the widespread corruption and lack of jobs exploded. On August 5, 2024, she was compelled to resign and fled to India; her party, the Awami League, has been barred from participating in elections. As an interim government took over, the students laid out their demands: elections to deliver a more inclusive government; a stronger democracy with term limits for the prime minister and a more independent judiciary; accountability for elite corruption and extrajudicial killing; and better economic opportunities for its young population.
But in interviews with dozens of Bangladeshis about the revolution, many said the hope that once united students has unbraided. It is anticipated that the leader of a political party with a long history will win the elections and become the next prime minister. The ambitious reform program has been diluted. Even after so many lives have been lost, many students expressed doubt that the movement will accomplish any of its major objectives.
Majedur Rahman, a 25-year-old applied mathematics student at the University of Dhaka, stated that “their sacrifice can’t go in vain.” If the system is not fair after this election, Mr. “We will have to stand up again,” Rahman declared. Some young Bangladeshis are trying to remain optimistic despite their frustration. Khalid Muhammad Khan Abir, a student who was one of the protesters and was 23 years old, said, “This is a great opportunity for me to show my right, my capability, and my choice.”
But Mr. Abir says that the current political parties are unlikely to bring about much change because they are likely to follow the same pattern of greed, corruption, and power grabs that stifled Bangladesh under Ms. Hasina. Referring to those politicians, he said, “When I get power, I feel that I’m the only one, and I can do anything, and my word is the last word.”
Even the National Citizen Party, formed by students on a platform of making political reforms legally enforceable, has made compromises. It struck an alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami, a party dedicated to running the country under Islamic law, upsetting students who wanted their representatives to be more secular and inclusive.
The N.C.P. has stated that it only joined hands with Jamaat for the election and disagrees with many of the party’s tenets. Instead, many students say they hope for a referendum on political reform that will also be on the ballot. A consensus document known as the July Charter was approved in July by the interim government of Bangladesh and dozens of political parties. It contained a collective vision for the country’s future as well as specific suggestions for how to achieve it. In a legally binding referendum on Thursday, Bangladeshis will be able to decide whether or not to implement those reforms.
Measures to increase women’s political participation and the establishment of a bicameral legislature in which the upper house receives seats based on a percentage of the votes they receive in the lower house are among the proposals. This structure is intended to restrain parliamentary power. Bickering and opposition to many of the proposed reforms by the two largest political parties, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat, and many others, led to a watered-down set of proposals. The B.N.P. is expected to win the elections.
That compromise has shrunk the ambitions of the movement.
Dr. The student movement was described as “aspirational” by Iftekharuzzaman, the executive director of Transparency International in Bangladesh. He stated that Bangladesh must establish a solid foundation by strengthening its institutions and adding more checks and balances in order to chart a new political course. He stated that the July Charter could have served as that foundation, but in its current state, it is already unstable. Dr. stated, “We had an opportunity.” Iftekharuzzaman, who only goes by that name. “It’s an opportunity lost.”
One of the most important ideas is to make it easier for women to get involved in politics. That was especially meaningful because women were highly prominent in the protest movement. The July Charter calls for at least 10 percent of candidates nominated to the proposed Upper House to be women, and it sets a road map for women’s representation in the Lower House, going from 5 percent to 33 percent over several elections.
Jamaat, the religiously conservative bloc that is partnering with the student party for the elections, issued a harsh rebuke in response to that. Shafiqur Rahman, the leader of Jamaat, compared the employment of women to prostitution in a post posted last week on his X account. Representatives of Jamaat stated after the post went viral that Mr. The account of Rahman had been hacked.
Taposhi Rabeya, a student activist who participated in the protests, said she was shocked by the comments and disheartened that political parties had nominated so few women candidates for the election. Only 81 of the 2,028 candidates, including independents, are women. Ms. Rabeya stated that she had hoped for a new kind of politics in which outcomes were not determined by power, money, or intimidation. “But our political leaders have not been able to leave those practices behind,” she said.
From the student revolution of 2024 to the election on Thursday, many things have happened that Bangladeshis may want to forget: riots and chaos following the death of a student leader, a resurgence of Islamic extremism, violent confrontations between political parties, attacks on Hindu minorities, and even a fight over cricket matches between Bangladesh and India. With people gathering for the election, the country’s mood was festive, if not exactly celebratory. The government has declared a two-day national holiday, so schools, colleges and other institutions were closed.
This week, as many Bangladeshis went back to their districts to vote, the streets of Dhaka started to empty. The trains at the city’s main rail hub, Kamalapur Railway Station, were so full that some passengers sat on the roof of the train. Until two days before the election, political parties conducted late-night home visits as part of their frantic campaigning. For days, large campaign posters — on fabric rather than paper — have dotted the streets.
To preserve the environment, the government had demanded the change. Rashid Ahmed, who was on his way to vote in the town of Brahmanbaria, said, “Voting is a joyful thing.” “I’m going through the hassle to get home, despite all this traffic.” But the government is also primed for the possibility of violence, with nearly a million army, paramilitary and police troops stationed outside polling booths and along streets across the country, officials said. Their presence is an unsettling reminder for some Bangladeshis. More than 1,000 police officers remain in detention or face criminal charges for their roles in the killing of student protesters under Ms. Hasina’s rule.
Many of the officers patrolling Dhaka have switched to their new outfits, but others are yet to receive their sets — a reminder of a country caught between its history and its future.
