Former adviser to the interim government Mahfuj Alam on Monday said the National Citizen Party (NCP) failed to live up to the expectations people had of it in the aftermath of the July uprising.
“The Jatiya Nagorik Committee was formed bringing together people from both the right and the left. But later, when it took the shape of the NCP, the party moved away from that inclusive space,” Mahfuj said while speaking at a seminar titled ‘Return of Electoral Democracy: Reflections and Learning from 2026,’ organized by the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) at the BRAC Centre in Mohakhali.
Mahfuj said the party ended up favoring or excluding members based on which political camp, right or left, they belonged to. “A boy is affiliated with a right-leaning party and gets special benefits from NCP because of that. Or take another case where someone is deprived within NCP for the same reason. Neither of these was supposed to happen. But that is exactly what happened.”
He noted that before NCP emerged as a political party, the Jatiya Nagorik Committee had even included popular figures such as YouTuber Salman Muktadir. “We wanted to move forward with everyone who was inspired by the spirit of July. But that did not happen, and eventually I too had to step aside.”
Speaking on the same panel, former NCP leader Tasnim Jara, who contested as an independent candidate from Dhaka-9 in the February 2026 national election, said she did not leave the party out of any grievance. “People think I left NCP in a huff. To tell the truth, the party itself did not stay true to its position. I have remained firm in mine.”
Another former NCP woman leader, Tajnuva Jabeen, said those who once embodied the spirit of a discrimination-free Bangladesh and took to the streets in the 2024 movement that ousted the previous government are no longer organized as a force.
“A major reason the July Charter, built on the spirit of July, could not be implemented is that those who once carried that spirit have drifted away from their original position. I myself resigned from NCP the day before submitting my nomination papers ahead of the election,” Jabeen said.
Speakers at the event also observed a significant gap in women's participation in Bangladesh's politics, along with visible violations of the code of conduct during election campaigning and instances of elected representatives losing sight of their original goals after taking office.
