By Veeragathy Thanabalasingham
Colombo, February 22 – In South Asia, where popular uprisings have toppled governments in recent years, new governments were elected in late 2024 in Sri Lanka and last week in Bangladesh. Elections in Nepal are scheduled to be held on March 5.
In all three countries, however, the forces that led the uprisings have been seen as incapable of influencing subsequent political developments. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led National People’s Poweer ( NPP) won the presidential and parliamentary elections, two years after the 2022 ‘Aragalaya’ people’s uprising that ousted the Rajapaksa regime in Sri Lanka.
Its victory in the Parliamentary elections was even bigger than in the Presidential election. All the traditional political parties, representing the political elite, suffered a crushing defeat.
Despite not being in the forefront of the uprising, the JVP came to power under the leadership of Anura Kumara Dissanayake, cleverly using popular resentment against the traditional political class responsible for misrule. Some observers had described the NPP’s coming to power as a class shift in political power.
The NPP benefited from the popular uprising that demanded systemic change and a new political culture. But the people’s indifference to the People Struggle Alliance ( PSA) formed by youth leaders, left-wing groups and political activists who were at the forefront of the uprisings was intriguing.
The Presidential candidate of the PSA, Nuwan Bopage, received only 11,191 votes (0.08 percent). In the parliamentary elections, they received 26,611 votes (0.27 percent) nationally and failed to win even a single seat in parliament. In the local elections, they won 16 seats with 50,492 votes (0.48 percent).
In Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP ) led by Tarique Rahman, the son of late former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia, won a landslide victory in the first national election since the 2024 popular uprising that ended Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule. Rahman is the scion of one of Bangladesh’s two main politically dominant families and was sworn in as prime minister on February (17). The BNP has come to power after 20 years.
The BNP-led alliance won 212 seats in parliament, securing a two-thirds majority. An alliance, led by Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami, emerged as the main opposition party with 77 seats. The Islamists were able to win a large number of seats because the interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus had banned Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party.
In the meantime, the National Citizens’ Party (NCP ) formed by student leaders who led the uprising known as the ‘2024 July Revolution’, contested the election in alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islami. It seems that its leaders realized the danger entering the fray alone.
The NCP, which fielded candidates in 32 constituencies, was able to win only six seats with 3.05 per cent of the vote. Its convener Nahid Islam, who contested from a constituency in the capital Dhaka, managed to defeat the BNP candidate by only about 2,000 votes.
A nationwide referendum was also held along with the parliamentary election to seek popular approval for the ‘July 2025 National Charter’, which was declared in October last year with a view to carrying out major constitutional reforms.
Last October, 33 political parties signed the Charter, which contains more than 80 reform proposals aimed at preventing the return of autocratic-fascist rule. Although the BNP also signed it, it registered serious disagreements over a number of important provisions.
As the Charter was approved by 60.25 percent of voters the new government of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, has a political and legal obligation to carry out the envisaged constitutional reforms.
On the basis of the charter’s guidelines, important constitutional institutions, including the Election Commission, should be restructured and the responsibility of holding elections in the future should be handed over to an impartial Interim Government ; Parliament should be made bicameral and an upper house of 100 members should be established. Members of the upper house should be appointed under a proportional representation system based on the votes received by political parties in the national elections.
In future any constitutional amendment must be passed with the approval of a majority of the members of the Upper House. One cannot hold the office of Prime Minister for more than two terms; the representation of women must be increased; and the Deputy Speaker and the chairpersons of parliamentary committees must be elected from among the opposition parties.
The referendum’s passage imposes specific obligations on the new Parliament. Under the Constitutional Reform Order 2025, the newly elected legislature will function as a Constitutional Reform Council with a fixed tenure of 180 working days to implement the Charter’s provisions.
Elected members will be required to take two separate oaths, one as members of Parliament and another as members of the Constitutional Reform Council.
Political analysts say the coming months will test whether the BNP’s commitment to the Charter withstands the practical challenges of implementation. Disagreements over specific provisions will require negotiations between the government and opposition parties represented in Parliament.
At the same time, despite the fact that Bangladesh needs a democratic transition from an unelected interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, political observers question the legitimacy of last week’s elections, because it was held after banning one of the country’s largest parties, the Awami League.
The international affairs editor of The Hindu, Stanley Johny, has posed the following questions in the social media; ” If the US held an election banning the Democratic Party, would you have called it a success? If the UK held an election banning Labour or Conservatives, would it have been democratic? If India held an election barring the Congress from contesting, would it have been a triumph for democracy? Or can Nepal transition to legitimate democracy by banning the United Marxists or the Maoist?”
Although many observers have praised the smooth conduct of the election, they seem to have forgotten that the ban on the Awami League is a fundamental flaw in the electoral process. It has strengthened the Islamist political party, they point out.
As elections are approaching in Nepal, reports suggest that the leaders of younger generation which led the popular uprising that toppled the government of former Prime Minister K.P.Oli Sharma, are struggling to find places in the traditional political parties such as the Nepali Congress and the Nepal Communist Party. It seems that like the leaders the Bangaladesh’s NCP, the Nepalese protesters also do not have the courage to contest the elections on their own.
Even after the uprising in Bangladesh, the people have brought a traditional political party to power through elections. But in Sri Lanka, the people rejected the traditional parties and brought to power a political party that had never enjoyed state power before. This can be seen as a difference between the regime changes.
Why is it that in these countries the youthful forces that had overthrown governments through street protests and laid the groundwork for political change are unable to win popular support in elections? Why are they incapable of influencing the power structures of post uprising politics? Why is it that in the end, only a traditional party is able to enjoy the fruits of the revolts?
Bangladesh is the next example in South Asia after Sri Lanka where it was easier for a protest movement to topple a government than winning elections.
From the Arab Spring to the popular uprisings in South Asia, it has been demonstrated that in today’s modern world, where social media dominates, protest movements are able to mobilize people and overthrow governments through street protests, but they are incapable of transforming themselves into political forces that can come to power through elections.
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