Jamaat-NCP alliance and the challenges it faces

Before an election, political parties try to stay ahead in the race for power by forging alliances and understandings with one another. This is a very common reality in the politics of the subcontinent. In that line, the alliance formed by the NCP and Jamaat ahead of the 2026 national election represents a new variable in electoral calculations. However, it is not merely the act of forming the alliance itself; rather, the political history preceding it and the reactions that emerged immediately afterward have brought this alliance to the centre of renewed debate.

Since the alliance was formed, a three-pronged circle of reactions has taken shape. Within NCP itself, around 30 central leaders have taken a stand against the alliance. Not only have they opposed it, but several central leaders have also resigned from the party, as they found it impossible to accept an alliance between the NCP and Jamaat. This internal dissent has raised fresh questions about the NCP’s organisational unity, although the party maintains that such differences of opinion are part of its internal democratic practice.

On the other hand, after NCP joined the alliance, Islami Andolon Bangladesh began openly questioning various aspects of the coalition. There has even been speculation that it may withdraw from the alliance. In the meantime, the party has submitted its own nomination papers in 272 constituencies, clearly indicating that it either wants to bargain from a position of strength over seat sharing within the alliance or is interested in contesting independently to demonstrate its political capacity on its own.

Meanwhile, Jamaat has ceded several of its promising and strong constituencies to NCP and other partners in the alliance. As a result, a degree of dissatisfaction and resentment has surfaced within Jamaat itself, particularly on social media. It is evident that some supporters and activists are not welcoming this party decision. They view entering into an alliance with NCP and relinquishing promising seats as a mistake.

Overall, it can be said that this alliance has generated far more discussion and criticism than an ordinary election-time coalition, and the question of what kind of impact it will have on the country’s political equations in the days ahead remains open.

In politics, alliances are formed primarily with the aim of winning a majority of seats and attaining power. In that context, there has been speculation that before forming an alliance with Jamaat, NCP had tried to forge an alliance with BNP. However, after failing to reach a seat-sharing arrangement with the BNP and following the BNP’s final announcement of its nominees, NCP ultimately turned towards Jamaat. In other words, it can be said that only after the last door to an alliance with the BNP was closed did the NCP shift its focus to Jamaat.

Although the NCP claims that Jamaat’s position on reforms is largely aligned with its own, and that this is why it was interested in forming an alliance, in reality NCP leaders were seen questioning Jamaat’s sincerity on reforms prior to the alliance-building process. From this standpoint, a natural question arises: is the objective of this alliance with Jamaat primarily reform, or is it merely an attempt to calculate electoral arithmetic, one in which no broader ideological or long-term political interest of the alliance is paramount, but rather a situational and strategic, election-time decision?

Initially, however, NCP sought to present young people with the dream of a new political arrangement. Its leaders frequently spoke of their determination to emerge in the electoral arena as a third force, outside the orbit of Jamaat or the BNP. In keeping with that stance, the NCP announced that it would contest the election independently and even sold 1,484 nomination forms. But the party could not sustain that position for long. It quickly became active in searching for electoral partners, a shift that can be assumed to have been driven mainly by two factors.

First, the country’s general election system is extremely complex, and the use of muscle power, and the reality of confronting it, poses a major challenge. Despite public support for the NCP as indicated by various surveys, in many areas its dedicated activist base has not yet become sufficiently organised to withstand the pressures and competition of an election period. As a result, the party needed a political partner capable of providing such support at the grassroots level.

NCP convener Nahid Islam also pointed to the issues of insecurity and violence during elections, citing the incidents involving Shahid Sharif and Osman Hadi, and noted that these concerns were among the key factors influencing the decision to form an alliance. Against this backdrop, Jamaat emerged as an effective alternative for the NCP.

The second factor concerns the results of student union elections. In those elections, the NCP contested on its own but failed to achieve any notable success. As a result, the NCP may have realised that although it enjoys scattered public support, this support may not be sufficiently effective in translating into electoral victories. Consequently, by entering into an alliance, the party can hope to combine the alliance’s votes with those of its own supporters and expect to win a number of seats.

Recent opinion polls consistently show that the BNP’s vote bank is significantly ahead of Jamaat’s. Taking this reality into account, Jamaat has sought to strengthen and diversify its political position through alliance-building rather than proceeding on its own. As a result, Jamaat has adopted the strategy of forming an alliance as a way to pose a tough challenge to the BNP in the election.

Given that Jamaat is a religion-based political party and that its role in the Liberation War has long been a subject of questions and controversy, the party has tried to construct an alliance framework through which its position can be presented as comparatively balanced and acceptable by incorporating diversity. In that context, Jamaat has brought Colonel Oli Ahmed’s LDP into the alliance so that it can present its stance on Liberation Warp-related issues more clearly and credibly. At the same time, with an eye on reaching younger voters, it has also included the NCP in the alliance.

On the other hand, in order to consolidate voters who favour Islam or hold positive views towards Islamic political parties, Jamaat has attempted to bring Islamic parties together under its banner. Through this alliance structure, Jamaat has essentially adopted a strategy of placing the Islamic vote bank under one umbrella, so as to reduce vote fragmentation and create a combined force.

Overall, it becomes clear that Jamaat has sought to bring together three different strands of political parties in this alliance to address areas where it feels politically deficient. In other words, the alliance reflects an effort to strengthen its position ideologically, generationally, and organisationally.

Although both Jamaat and the NCP face certain challenges within this alliance, in reality it appears that most of the challenges will have to be tackled by NCP. For Jamaat, the most significant potential challenge is the decision to cede some of its promising constituencies to the NCP. If the NCP fails to perform well in those seats, Jamaat’s prospects of moving closer to power as part of the alliance could be significantly reduced. At the same time, there is a risk that the opportunity Jamaat had to re-strengthen itself in the post-5 August period could also be disrupted.

However, the major challenges largely centre on the NCP. From the outset, the NCP has tried to present itself as an entirely new political formation. Its political narrative has been crafted mainly for a segment of voters who prefer secular politics, are somewhat indifferent to religion-based politics, or dream of an alternative to conventional and traditional political currents. By entering into an alliance with Jamaat, the NCP now faces the risk of losing some of its appeal among this group of voters.

At the same time, the practical reality is that if the NCP had not joined this alliance and had contested the election independently but failed to secure a significant number of seats out of 300, or even to obtain a sufficient share of votes, it might have struggled to survive as a political party at all. From that perspective, it can be assumed that the NCP decided to join the alliance by compromising with political reality.

A second major challenge for the NCP is the loss of an opportunity to expand its organisational presence nationwide and to establish itself as a third or alternative force-an effort from which it has now stepped back, potentially carrying forward a lasting internal division within the party. In this election, the NCP is contesting only a limited number of constituencies where its organisational base may be relatively strong. However, it has largely been deprived of the opportunity that a national election provides to build a broad and robust organisation across the country.

Had the NCP fielded candidates in all 300 constituencies, even without winning most of them, it could have built a strong nationwide organisational structure that would have been extremely helpful in future local government elections or subsequent national polls. The decision to enter into an alliance has, for the time being, constrained that possibility.
How far the Jamaat-NCP alliance, in the absence of Awami League, will be able to pose a serious challenge to the BNP is a question that can only be definitively answered after the upcoming election.

However, the momentum this alliance has generated in the electoral arena suggests the prospect of a competitive election. In the long run, such a competitive environment also carries a positive message for the development of a strong, effective, and participatory democracy.

* Syeda Lasna Kabir is Professor and Chairperson, Department of Public Administration, University of Dhaka
Sk Tawfique Haque is Professor and Director, South Asian Institute of Policy and Governance (SIPG), North South University
Mohammad Esa Ibn e Belal is Lecturer, Department of Public Administration and Governance Studies, Jatiya Kabi Kazi Nazrul Islam University
* The views expressed here are the authors’ own.