The new and hyped National Citizen Party in Bangladesh has reportedly managed to win only six seats in the country’s high-voltage parliamentary elections, held on 12 February.
Founded by the student leaders of the so-called July Revolution of 2024, which toppled an elected government led by Sheikh Hasina, the party was expected to convert national sentiments, mainly anti-Hasina ones, into electoral gains. Social media campaigns and opinion had already delivered their verdict: NCP would be the game-changer — after all, they were the ones who set the tone.
However, unlike the traditional parties, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Jamaat-e-Islami, NCP has struggled with frictions over leadership, ideological differences, and an ambitious quest for power. Marred by its own insecurities, it joined hands with the regressive Jamaat-e-Islami, and the people of Bangladesh have now delivered a sweeping verdict in favour of the BNP.
The outcome of the Bangladesh elections brings back an age-old debate: can populism convert street power into electoral gains?
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Enter the rational voter
In India, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is a rare success story. Born out of the Indian Against Corruption movement, it converted the national mood created by the Jantar Mantar protests against the establishment into votes and won the Delhi elections, ousting India’s biggest and oldest party, the Indian National Congress. Unlike movements that sought to topple governments, AAP tested its appeal through electoral entry.
So, why did the movements in Sri Lanka in 2022 and Bangladesh in 2024 fail to pull off a similar feat? Why have youth movements struggled to challenge traditional leadership and political parties?
The answer lies with the rational voter, someone who does not want to waste a vote and who carefully considers leadership and experience. After all, running a country is not about social media approvals or the number of followers on Instagram or X.
The recent Gen Z Movements across Asia, be it Nepal or the Philippines, show that the bubble of social media was certainly successful in raising the right questions and pressing issues, whether corruption, nepotism, poor governance, or law and order. However, the heft of traditional political parties and their leadership on the ground makes a difference.
Power makes youth impatient for quick results, but that doesn’t always fly in elections.
With Nepal’s 5 March elections approaching, many youth leaders have struggled to find space in traditional parties such as the Nepali Congress, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), or the Nepal Communist Party. They are looking into the winnability of candidates in youth-centric parties like the Rashtriya Swatantra Party.
In Sri Lanka, too, it was the established National People’s Power-led alliance, with Anura Kumara Dissanayake as its leader, that won the elections, not the People’s Struggle Alliance (PSA), founded by the youth leaders of the Aragalaya protest. PSA not only failed to win seats but also saw its vote share remain tiny.
Sri Lanka and Bangladesh both show that youth do not necessarily represent all age groups. Voter demographics include people across generations.
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NCP’s missed opportunity
Coming back to Bangladesh, among the approximately 12.5 million registered voters, youth aged 18-35 accounted for 30 per cent. While NCP could have attracted these voters, it faced strong competition from the student wings of the BNP and the Jamaat, which are as old as the parties themselves.
Also, NCP was a victim of its own folly. The leadership contest within the party was so acute that it could not muster the confidence to even contest the university elections in September 2025. Its luck could have been tested there, but it avoided the risk, perhaps fearing that a loss in student elections would set the national mood.
Even Jamaat’s student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, which swept Dhaka University and Jahangir Nagar University, was seen as an indicator of a national victory for Jamaat. That did not happen either.
And finally, NCP, which was supposed to represent a forward-looking, aspirational youth, joined Jamaat, a party that threatens the country’s foundational principles of cultural syncretism, secularism, and women’s empowerment, and also has a horrible history attached to it.
NCP tried defending the indefensible, and the results are out.
To conclude, in the modern age, social media may be an effective and accessible platform to unite voices, convey disenchantment against the government, or express grievances. But the election results demonstrate that while populist protest movements can reshape political narratives and weaken incumbents, electoral success typically depends on party organisation, leadership structure, and institutional presence rather than protest popularity alone.
Rishi Gupta is a commentator on global affairs. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)