Author: M Shiful Islam

The Jatiya Party (JaPa), long regarded as a fragile and subservient opposition force, has suddenly adopted a defiant tone, sparking questions over the true source of its strength. Presidium member Haji Saifuddin Ahmed Milon made an unusually candid admission: “Our strength comes from foreign friends. We can’t deny it. But the real power of a political party is its people.” Milon did not identify the “foreign friends,” but political analyst Professor Dilara Chowdhury pointed to India, recalling the role of Sujatha Singh, the country’s former foreign secretary, in forcing JaPa into the 2014 election. “The root of JaPa’s power lies…

Barely seven months after its launch as a political party, the National Citizen Party (NCP) is drawing more attention for its leaders’ foreign tours than for politics at home. During the last one month alone, the party’s top brass visited Malaysia, China, and Japan, with a delegation still abroad – even as its organisational work inside Bangladesh remains incomplete, raising doubts about whether its lofty promises of “new politics” can take root. The party, born out of the student-led July 2024 mass uprising, has been unable to form committees in all 64 districts and 495 upazilas of the country. So…

Jamaat-e-Islami, Islami Andolan Bangladesh, and three other like-minded Islamic parties will launch simultaneous movements to press home their demands for the implementation of the July Charter, holding elections under the proportional representation (PR) system, and banning the activities of Jatiya Party (JaPa) and other parties once aligned with the deposed Awami League. If the demands are not met shortly, they will move to tougher programmes such as strikes and road blockades by the end of September, party leaders said. “We will pursue lighter programmes for a week. If our demands are not realised, we will go for tougher ones,” a…