Launching a student-led political party in Bangladesh is a matter of months if not weeks. The leaders (popularly known as coordinators) of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement have been talking about forming a new party soon after the ouster of Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League government in a mass upsurge led by them last year. A branch called the Jatiya Nagorik Committee (JNC) has emerged out of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement. Strong speculation that the JNC will transform into a political party has been in the air for quite some time.
In remarks to reporters in December last year, Nasiruddin Patwary, convener of JNC, said, “The Anti-Discrimination Student Movement and Jatiya Nagorik Committee are planning to form a new political party within a month or two.”
Explaining further, he added, "We are currently a political initiative, born out of the 2024 mass uprising, comprising forces that defeated Awami fascism and aim to rebuild Bangladesh.”
In their bid to launch a political party, the students have strong backing from Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus who took over the charge of the country’s interim government at their request. In a podcast with the London-based Financial Times, he cleared his position. “In the changed political scenario,” he said, “one of the possibilities is that the students will form a political party”. Yunus said that many believe students would not have the chance to get even one seat in parliament because no one knows them, but that is not what he thinks. “I said the whole nation knows them. Let them take a chance, whatever they want to do. So they will do it.”
Sure the students will do it. The new political party may even be launched by February. Student leaders (though some of them are no longer students) have been out on the streets to shop for support for their yet-to-be-launched party. They have been holding meetings with local-level student coordinators, like-minded people, and sympathizers to explain why they need a separate political party. In simple words, it is to build a new Bangladesh by establishing a government that will take care of people’s aspirations for a democratic country free of corruption and respectful of human rights. As one leader says the new party will sit neither on the right nor the left. It will be a centrist organization.
The new party will enter into the pages of history when it is launched. The students of Bangladesh, mostly those from Dhaka University, have a long history of leading all pro-democracy movements. Starting from the 1952 Language Movement, the students were at the forefront of subsequent movements in 1962 and 1969 leading up to the 1971 War of Liberation. In every movement, political parties followed the students. But never before do students think of forming a political party of their own, contesting elections, and winning power so they can govern the country in fulfillment of people’s aspirations. The experiment, if we may see it this way, has already raised many questions besides inspiring interest at home and abroad. The key question is whether the initiative would be a king’s party. What will be the status of the three student leaders who sit in the Council of Advisers of the Yunus-led interim government? Are they going to quit as advisers to join the new political party? Aren’t they already involved in the organization of the party? Speculations are rife that the three advisers will quit the interim government should they decide to join the political party. BNP, which is largely expected to win the next national polls and form a government, is keeping a close watch on the students’ experiment with direct politics, forming a party, and taking part in elections. So are others. Let’s see how it unfolds.
