Bangladesh student leader aims to finish what uprising began

DHAKA: Bangladeshi students who overthrew autocratic ex-premier Sheikh Hasina last year have formed a new political party to finish the work that began with her ouster, the group´s leader told AFP.

Nahid Islam, 27, was one of the most visible faces of the youth-led protest campaign Students Against Discrimination, which brought down the curtain on Hasina´s iron-fisted rule after 15 years.

The sociology graduate resigned last week from the interim administration that replaced her to lead the new National Citizens Party (NCP), arguing that Bangladesh´s political establishment lacked the will for far-reaching reforms.

“They were not even interested in the reforms for which young people sacrificed their lives,” Nahid told AFP. “Because we have an obligation to implement what we pledged during the mass uprising and its aftermath, we decided to form a political party,” he said.

More than 800 people were killed in last year´s uprising, and Nahid was briefly detained alongside other student leaders in an unsuccessful effort to force them to call off the protests. After Hasina´s toppling, he accepted an invitation to join an interim government led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, 84.

Nahid´s decision to helm the NCP necessitated his departure from an administration expected to act as a politically neutral umpire while preparing Bangladesh for fresh elections. Polls are due by March next year and are widely expected to be won by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), one of the country´s oldest political forces.

Nahid said that even if he and his comrades could not form the next government, they had inaugurated a political force set to be influential for decades to come. “Nobody knew that there would be an uprising, but it happened,” he said.

“I sincerely hope and I believe that we are going to win this time. But this election is not the end of the world... Our target is to sustain this energy for another 50 or 100 or more years.”