In February 2025, the National Citizens Party (NCP) was established by the prominent youth leaders of Bangladesh’s so-called ‘Gen-Z Revolution.’ This student-led uprising had terminated Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year authoritarian tenure during the summer of 2024. The primary objective of the party was to transition young leaders into the parliament. The 2024 uprising comprised a broad coalition of liberals, leftists, Islamists and nationalists. The Bangladesh Jamaat-i-Islami (BJI) emerged as the most organised faction. It had been a primary target of Hasina’s government. The movement against Hasina’s rule was highly iconoclastic, actively attacking symbols associated with the birth of Bangladesh and the role played by Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujeeb, in this birth. He is someone the BJI detests. When the young leaders of the 2024 uprising decided to formalise their revolution by establishing a political party, the move was immediately met with internal confusion. The NCP’s ranks comprised a volatile mix of progressives, secularists, conservatives and nationalists. Internal debates were often heated but failed to produce a consolidated consensus. Instead, a flimsy foundational statement was tabled, asserting that the party was neither secular nor Islamist. This was criticised by political analysts as a product of political ambiguity. This lack of clarity became particularly apparent during the drafting of the party’s primary charter. The leadership struggled to reconcile the aspirations of its secular factions with the increasing influence of its Islamist factions. By refusing to define its stance on the role of religion in the state, the party risked becoming a vessel for any organised group capable of mobilising the street. This led to NCP’s controversial alignment with the BJI for the elections. From Pakistan in 1977 and Iran in 1979 to Egypt in 2011 and Bangladesh in 2026, when loosely organised reformists align with disciplined Islamist forces, the ‘revolution’ rarely ends as they imagine This represents a classic phenomenon observed across various developing nations, where small progressive groups frequently align themselves with the more organised right-wing forces. Such progressives often operate under the belief that this partnership will provide a viable route into the corridors of power by leveraging the superior organisational machinery of right-wing parties. However, the historical precedent for such alliances is almost invariably disastrous. In these arrangements, the smaller progressive elements often find themselves ideologically hollowed out or eventually sidelined by their resource-rich right-wing ‘partners’. The NCP’s attempt to harness the mobilising power of the BJI ultimately compromised the youthful party’s reformist identity and led to significant internal fractures. In the 1977 general elections in Pakistan, and the subsequent anti-Bhutto protest movement, various small secular and progressive parties joined an alliance that was largely led by the country’s three main Islamist parties. The alliance viewed the Zulfikar Ali Bhutto regime as tyrannical. However, the progressives in the alliance frequently found themselves at a loss for words when their Islamist ‘allies’ began advocating for the replacement of Bhutto’s ‘socialist’ policies with a government based on Shariah law. When the Bhutto regime was toppled in a reactionary military coup, the progressives and secularists in the alliance found themselves in jails or exile, while the Jamaat-i-Islami, a major partner in the alliance, successfully integrated itself into the first cabinet of the new military regime. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 provides another prominent example of this precarious dynamic. In the late 1970s, a broad coalition of secular liberals, leftists and student activists collaborated with religious clerics under Ayatollah Khomeini to overthrow the Shah of Iran. According to the Iranian-American historian Ervand Abrahamian, middle-class progressives operated under the assumption that, as the “intellectual engines of the uprising”, they would inevitably dictate the shape of the post-revolutionary state. However, once the Shah was ousted, the more organised Islamist factions rapidly consolidated authority. This resulted in a systematic and brutal purge of their former secular and leftist partners. A similar pattern emerged in Egypt following the ousting of Hosni Mubarak in 2011. The sociologist Hazem Kandil wrote that the secular and liberal activists who had led the protests lacked a formal political structure to translate their street presence into institutional power. They entered into a tactical partnership with the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. Although the Brotherhood won the ensuing elections, the alliance with the progressive youth disintegrated. The progressives felt that the Brotherhood had ‘hijacked’ the revolution to implement a narrow ideological agenda. This internal collapse eventually created the conditions for a military takeover in 2013. The NCP could only win seven seats in the recent parliamentary elections in Bangladesh. The elections were swept by the centrist Bangladesh National Party (BNP). Critics within the NCP are of the view that its alliance with an Islamist party alienated a significant number of their supporters, who decided to vote for the BNP, which has been a historical opponent of the Awami League. Progressives/leftists are often effective at articulating grievances and dominating the media narrative during an uprising. Yet, they frequently lack the social machinery required to sustain political power. They employ ‘tactical entryism’, believing that it is more convenient to enter into a partnership with  larger right-wing parties and use their physical and logistical strength to grab a piece of the power pie and gradually steer the government toward reform. Such moves frequently fail. Right-wing parties are strictly hierarchical and highly disciplined. This makes it easy for them to later purge their more loosely organised progressive ‘allies’. A recent case of ‘entryism’ is visible in the Tehreek-i-Tahaffuz-i-Aaien-i-Pakistan (TTAP), an opposition alliance headed by the right-wing populist Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI). It contains a mixture of sectarian outfits, secularists, conservatives and a left-wing group. The left within this alliance has decided not to view PTI as a right-wing party but as a populist vehicle for ‘democracy’ and, of course, its own entry into a future parliament. There may also be an ambition that they might simply step into the vacuum and replace the PTI that is in such spectacular shambles. After all, what better way to lead the masses than by hijacking a shipwreck, no? One can only admire the intellectual flexibility required for these activists to rationalise positions that contradict their own stated values, most notably PTI’s steadfast refusal to entertain any meaningful action against Islamist militants. It is a masterclass in moral amnesia. Meanwhile, the alliance’s more seasoned folk, who are ex-devotees of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), are clearly treating this populist vehicle as an elaborate audition. Their goal isn’t so much to save the soul of the nation as it is to bat their eyelashes at the establishment, hoping to be hand-picked for the lead role in the next state-sanctioned ‘king’s party.’ Ultimately, the whole spectacle offers far more fodder for a dark comedy than it does for any genuine ‘struggle for democracy’ and the ‘sanctity of the constitution.’ Published in Dawn, EOS, February 22nd, 2026