Gen Z toppled Bangladesh's autocratic regime. Will it decide the next government?

As he prepared to leave Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, to return to his hometown to vote, Mohammad Ali couldn't quite believe he was participating in a historic election. 

"I'm going to vote for the first time and participate in what looks to be a fair election" after watching three successive elections that weren't legitimate, said Ali, a fourth-year political science student at Dhaka University, who had plans to vote with some childhood friends. "We're very excited." 

At a tea stand near a private university at the other end of the capital, Rahul Ghosh Joy also spoke of his excitement at Thursday's vote, calling it "an election for the students." 

"It feels like a dream come true," said Joy, 23, a life sciences student at Dhaka's Independent University. 

"Students worked very hard for this type of election, and now we need to work [harder] so that a fair election takes place" and the country doesn't "deteriorate" further, he told CBC News. 

It's been 18 months since violent student-led protests brought down Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh's former autocratic leader, who ruled for 15 years as her government eroded democratic norms, stifled critics and jailed opponents. 

Hasina fled by helicopter to exile in India, but not before as many as 1,400 people died during the protests in the dying days of her regime, according to the United Nations. The vast majority were killed by security forces in a crackdown Hasina ordered — one the UN said could amount to crimes against humanity. 

The uprising was widely considered the world's first successful Gen Z protest. But in the months following Hasina's ouster, hopes for long-term reforms in Bangladesh dwindled.

An interim government led by Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus failed to fully implement an ambitious reform agenda, and many Bangladeshis became frustrated with the slow pace of change. 

Excitement aside, Ali, who was part of the protests, expressed worry that this week's election might lead to instability and said he was no longer convinced sweeping reforms were in his country's future.

"I fear many might remain on paper and not be fully executed," he said.

The country has traditionally seesawed between two main political parties, Hasina's Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), but this election is different. The 2024 uprising transformed the political landscape, even if it is still a fight between familiar faces of the old guard.

The absence of Awami League, which was banned by the caretaker government last year after public pressure, has left a vacuum that Bangladesh's main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, has capitalized on, analysts say. 

BNP — whose leader, Tarique Rahman, returned to the country in December after 17 years in self-imposed exile in Britain — is still considered the front-runner, but the election could be more hotly contested than many anticipated several months ago.