Edited by Deepali Verma
Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina emerged victorious for a fifth term on January 7, officials said, following a boycott led by an opposition party she branded a “terrorist organisation”. Awami League, with its leader Hasina, has “won more than 50 percent seats,” an Election Commission spokesman told AFP, with counting ongoing.
She has contributed to breakneck economic growth in a country once beset by grinding poverty. However, her government has been accused of rampant human rights violations and a ruthless opposition crackdown.
Awami League was faced with no effective rivals in the seats it contested, but it avoided putting new candidates in certain constituencies in an apparent effort to avoid the legislature being branded a one-party institution.
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), whose ranks witness fall by mass arrests, called for a general strike with dozens of others, refused to participate in a “sham election”.
Hasina, 76, asked the citizens to show faith in the democratic process. However, the election officials informed of a meagre turnout of some 40 percent.
“The BNP is a terrorist organisation,” she said to the reporters after casting her vote. “I am trying to ensure that democracy should continue in this country.”
Media picking results from the polling stations said Hasina managed a win of more than two-thirds of seats in parliament with nearly 90 percent of results declared.
Of the 264 seats of the total 300 announced, Hasina’s Awami League bagged 204 and her allied Jatiya Party added nine more, as per the results collated by Somoy TV, the country’s largest private news broadcaster.Shakib Al Hasan, one of the victors and Bangladesh cricket team captain, won his seat for Hasina’s party in a landslide, local officials said.
Glancing on the voter’s front, first-time voter Amit Bose, 21, said he had cast his ballot for his “favourite candidate”, but others remarked that they had not bothered because the outcome was assured.
“When there is one party participation and another is not, why would I go to vote?” said rickshaw-puller Mohammad Saidur, 31.
BNP head Tarique Rahman, living in exile in Britain, told AFP he feared the use of “fake votes” to boost voter turnout.
“What unfolded was not an election, but rather a disgrace to the democracy of Bangladesh,” he wrote on social media, alleging he had come across “disturbing pictures and videos” backing his claims.
The BNP along with different parties staged months of protests last year, demanding immediate Hasina step down ahead of the vote. Officers in the port city of Chittagong broke up an opposition protest on January 7 firing shotguns and tear gas canisters.
As per the report of the election officials, the voting was largely peaceful, with close to 800,000 police officers and soldiers deployed countrywide.
Meenakshi Ganguly, working for Human Rights Watch, said that the government had failed in reassuring opposition supporters that the polls would be fair, warning that “many fear a further crackdown”.
Politics in Bangladesh was long dominated by the rivalry between Hasina, the daughter of the country’s founding leader, and two-time premier Khaleda Zia, wife of a former military ruler.
Hasina, however, has been the decisive victor when she returned to power in a 2009 landslide, with two subsequent polls carried by widespread irregularities and accusations of rigging.
Zia, 78,faced charges of graft and was convicted in 2018 and presently finds herself in ailing health at a hospital in Dhaka. BNP head Rahman is her son.
Hasina has further accused the BNP of arson and sabotage during previous year’s protest campaign, which was mostly peaceful but saw several killings in police confrontations.
The government’s security forces finds itself laced in allegations of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances — charges it rejects.
Economic headwinds were the major source of disappointment with Hasina’s government, after sharp spikes in food costs and months of chronic blackouts in 2022.