"Nahid Islam was just 26 when he stepped up to a microphone at Dhaka's Shaheed Minar, a national monument, on August 3, 2024, and uttered a single rallying cry: Hasina must go. Student-led demonstrations had begun weeks earlier over a government job quota system that reserved a large share of coveted civil-service posts for special groups, including descendants of 1971 liberation war veterans, leaving too few merit-based opportunities for everyone else."
"When then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government moved to crush the protesters with lethal force, the backlash only swelled turning a youth-led revolt into a nationwide movement that, within days, brought down her regime. Islam was one of the figures at the forefront of Bangladesh's revolution: A young sociology student in a plain shirt, Bangladesh's green-and-red flag tied around his head, speaking for a generation that felt locked out of power and later a brief stint as cabinet adviser in Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus's transitional government."
"Now 27, he is standing in the February 12 election not much older than the minimum age of 25 for parliamentary candidates under the nation's constitution. And he is doing it as leader of the National Citizen Party (NCP), a political party born out of the anti-Hasina protests an attempt, its founding members said, to answer the question that hung over 2024's street victory: What comes after without just handing power back to the same carousel of old politics?"
Nahid Islam emerged as a youthful leader during mass 2024 protests against a government job quota system and called for Sheikh Hasina's removal. Government attempts to crush the protests with lethal force turned a student movement into a nationwide uprising that toppled the regime. Islam, a sociology student who later served briefly as an adviser in Muhammad Yunus's transitional cabinet, founded the National Citizen Party to offer a centrist alternative to established parties. At 27, he is contesting the February 12 parliamentary election as NCP leader, and the party has formed an electoral alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami, prompting mixed reactions.
Read at www.aljazeera.com
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