After toppling Hasina, young Bangladeshis turn to rallies

A Dhaka University student defied his parents and police to join protests that toppled former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, convinced the rallies were essential to ensure democracy prevailed over dynastic rule.



But ahead of the February 12 parliamentary election - the first since the upheaval - some of change supporters has faded.



Tens of thousands of young Bangladeshis, frustrated by years of repression ⁠and a lack of jobs and economic opportunity under Hasina’s rule, poured into the streets in 2024, eager for radical change and a “New Bangladesh”.



But while the elections will deliver a government without Hasina for the first time since 2008, there has been no major reform and no new ⁠viable alternative party has emerged, according to many, leaving the battle for government mostly between former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami.



Opinion polls put the established, but tarnished, parties as frontrunners.