Has Bangladesh’s new PM named student leaders to his cabinet? | Explainer News

Tarique Rahman has been sworn in as Bangladesh’s 11th prime minister with his 49-member cabinet, five days after his Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) swept to power in the first elections since a 2024 student-led uprising.

Among the cabinet members are Nurul Haque Nur and Zonayed Abdur Rahim Saki (popularly known as Zonayed Saki), first-time parliamentarians who were prominent in the uprising that ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Nur, who was catapulted to prominence in the wake of the 2018 antijob-quota movement, and Saki, a popular left-leaning leader, are not from the BNP, which has returned to power after 20 years.

Rahman, the son of late former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, was sworn in on Tuesday to the top executive office in the South Asian nation after 17 years in self-imposed exile in London.

Who is Nurul Haque Nur?

Nur, who comes from a lower middle class family in the remote district of Patuakhali in southern Bangladesh was elected as a member of parliament in the elections on Thursday. The 34-year-old won his constituency as a BNP-backed candidate of the Gono Odhikar Parishad party.

He first gained national prominence as a student leader from the University of Dhaka during the antiquota movement in 2018, leading demonstrations against Hasina’s Awami League government.

Students and youth across Bangladesh protested to call for reform in the conventional job quota system, under which more than half of much sought-after government jobs were reserved. Protesters accused the Awami League government of using the quota system to reward its supporters.

The Hasina government was forced to abolish the quota in 2018. But in June 2024, a court reinstated the quota system, triggering the protests that soon morphed into a wider call for the removal of Hasina’s “autocratic” regime. Hasina’s 15-rule was marked by widespread human rights violations and suppression of dissent.

Nur backed the student-led uprising and was a key mobiliser in the July 2024 revolution.

He cofounded Gono Odhikar Parishad, a rights-focused political party, and positioned himself as part of a youth-driven, antiestablishment movement in Bangladeshi politics. However, the party has been mired in frequent internal rifts and breakaways.

In the post-2024 Hasina period, Nur moved closer to the BNP-led bloc on reform and governance policies.

Who is Zonayed Saki?

Saki became involved in politics as a student activist during the movement against General Hussain Ershad, who ruled Bangladesh from 1982 to 1990.

The 52-year-old won the presidency of the Bangladesh Student Federation, a progressive student organisation, in 1998.

Saki is the joint convener of the Ganosanhati Andolan, or People’s Solidarity Movement, a progressive party that emerged in the late 2000s. He is a leading left-leaning voice in Bangladeshi politics.

He ran for mayor of the Dhaka North City Corporation in 2015 and lost. Saki also participated in the 2018 Bangladeshi general election from a Dhaka constituency but did not win.

He won the Brahmanbaria-6 constituency this time by a margin of 55,000 votes.

Addressing his supporters after the election win, Saki said: “All parties in the antiauthoritarian movement must remain united in the national interest and respectful of democratic norms.” He thanked BNP leaders for their support.

Why were they appointed to the cabinet?

Much like the new parliament, Rahman’s cabinet does not have much experience governing. All his junior cabinet ministers, including Nur and Saki, are first-timers.

Political analysts in Bangladesh said Saki’s and Nur’s appointments are not unexpected and are reflective of the BNP’s commitment to its alliance partners.

“Both of them represent parties that were alliance partners of the BNP,” said Asif Shahan, a professor at Dhaka University. “It’s more about awarding the alliance partners.”

At the same time, Shahan told Al Jazeera, both leaders are also “important figures in the July [2024] uprising and have a long history of fighting against the last [Hasina’s] authoritarian regime.”

Their appointments to the cabinet are “a recognition of their contribution to the July uprising”, Shahan said.

Being junior ministers means Nur and Saki will have limited powers in whichever ministries they are assigned to  in the coming days. “The BNP’s bench is quite strong, and a full ministership [for Nur or Saki] would mean that a senior leader from the party had to be dropped,” Shahan said. “Rahman had to strike a balance.”

What happened to the student leaders from the 2024 uprising?

The National Citizen Party (NCP), the party headed by the student leaders from the July 2024 uprising, entered an alliance with the conservative Jamaat-e-Islami party.

It did not make a splash in its first electoral test. The NCP secured only six of the 30 seats it contested. Its leader, Nahid Islam, 27, won, becoming one of the youngest MPs in the new parliament.

Now, it will be part of the opposition with Jamaat, a new arena for both.