Washington, February 16 – Citing the recent election results in Bangladesh, a report has highlighted how Gen-Z protests, which have proliferated in various regions, failed to translate demonstrations into political success at the ballot box or in policymaking.
Writing for the American think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Joshua Kurlantzick, Senior Fellow for Southeast Asia and South Asia, noted that the Bangladesh protests that ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024 were also one of the first major Gen-Z protest successes in Asia, and inspired similar efforts in Nepal (where protests toppled a Prime Minister), Indonesia (where protests stalled), and other places.
Their impact, according to Kurlantzick, reached as far as Madagascar, other parts of Africa, and the Caribbean, supposedly part of a worldwide trend of Gen-Z political uprisings, demonstrating that Gen-Z would make its impact felt on politics everywhere.
"However, while Gen-Z protests have proliferated, they have failed to turn demonstrations into political success at the ballot box or in policymaking," Kurlantzick wrote, while mentioning that recently, the People's Party, the party with the most support among Gen-Z in Thailand, was defeated in national elections, and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Japan, the dominant political party, successfully overcame challenges from a range of new parties oriented towards Gen-Z, achieving a massive victory.
"Therefore, in Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina is gone, but the party that emerged as the biggest winner in the election was not the party started by young leaders of the protests, or any other reform-minded party, but the BNP, the other half of the long-ruling duopoly. The BNP, which won by a landslide, has said all the right things, but many Bangladeshis do not trust it," he added.
The National Citizen Party (NCP), founded by the student leaders of the 2024 protests, won only six of the 30 seats it contested in parliament – "a very weak showing," reckoned Kurlantzick.
Writing in CFR, he detailed that by putting BNP back in power, Bangladeshis have overwhelmingly voted for major constitutional changes aimed at safeguarding democracy, broadening economic and political opportunities, and curbing corruption.
Now the question remains whether the BNP, now set to dominate parliament, will push these reforms through or not.
Whether the BNP acts or not will reveal whether the party has truly changed, and if it cannot, Kurlantzick said, Bangladeshi politics will remain mired in the same problems that existed before.
"Coming in second was the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, which attempted an image makeover for the election but has in the past been linked to deadly political violence, and is expressly misogynist. And even though this election was, on Election Day, free and fair, there was a spate of seemingly political killings and other violence leading up to the vote, as has happened too many times before in Bangladesh," he added.
