At least seven students were killed and scores injured across Bangladesh in the last three days, as protests over a quota system for government jobs continued on several campuses around the country. The quota system reserves 30 percent of government jobs, which are highly competitive, for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence.

The World Politics View, in its editorial, said the main trigger for these protests was a High Court ruling earlier this month that reinstated the quota, which had been abolished in 2018 amid widespread protests against it. After this latest round of demonstrations erupted, the court suspended its ruling for a month, but the demonstrations continued, with protesters calling the quota system unfair. Still, while these protests are ostensibly about discontent over job opportunities, they also mirror Bangladesh’s broader polarized political landscape, which remains rooted in the legacy of its war of independence.

On one side of the landscape is PM Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party, which led the independence movement and war under Hasina’s father. On the other is former PM Khaleda Zia, whose late husband led a coup against Hasina’s father in 1975. Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party, or BNP, has also partnered with an Islamist opposition party that in 1971 opposed independence.

As a result of this divide, the Awami League has long used the legacy of the war to maintain its support, target opposition figures and dismiss criticisms about the party’s authoritarian streak under Hasina, who has been in power since 2009. Indeed, Hasina has painted the current protests as an affront to the country’s “freedom fighters,” and the student wing of the Awami League was involved in the clashes with protesters that turned violent.

The protests are unlikely to represent any real threat to Hasina. But they do come at a bad time for her and her party. Since taking office for the second time in 2009, Hasina has consolidated power and closed democratic space while simultaneously riding a development boom fueled by the country’s integration into the global supply chain—specifically the textile industry. The combination of the two has kept the party in power, but the latter appears to be running dry, with Bangladesh facing an economic crisis that began in 2022 and has only worsened since.

These student protests, then, can also be viewed as just the latest sign of economic discontent in Bangladesh. Late last year, for instance, thousands of garment workers staged protests against low wages, which the government responded to with violent repression. Without the economic cover for her democratic backsliding that she once had, Hasina is likely to face even more protests like these going forward.