ELECTION IN BANGLADESH
Opposition slams ‘farcical’ vote
Bangladesh’s main opposition parties called for a fresh vote Sunday as the country’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, and her ruling Awami League were declared the winners of an election tainted by violence and vote-rigging allegations.
At least 17 people were said to have been killed in election-day clashes, while reports flowed in of alleged vote manipulation and people being blocked from entering polling stations by ruling party supporters.
As Hasina’s alliance sailed past the 151 seats needed to form a government and headed for a landslide third term, the country’s main opposition leader called for the “farcical” election to be declared void. Kamal Hossain, head of the Jatiya Oikya Front (JOF), the largest opposition alliance, told a press conference in Dhaka that votes had been “rigged on a massive scale across the country.”
He urged Bangladesh’s election commission to dismiss the result and call “fresh elections under a non-partisan caretaker government.”
With 220 of 300 parliamentary seats declared, the Awami League and its allies had won 212, while the JOF had taken four. Human Rights Watch and other international groups had decried repressive measures which they said had created a climate of fear.
On Sunday, some polling agents alleged they had been too scared to work. Others claimed they had been beaten up and forced out of voting centres.
The Associated Press received more than 50 calls from people across the country who identified themselves as opposition supporters complaining of intimidation and threats, and being forced to vote in front of ruling party men inside polling booths.
“Some stray incidents have happened. We have asked our officials to deal with them,” K.M. Nurul Huda, Bangladesh’s chief election commissioner, said as he cast his vote in the capital, Dhaka.
The election campaign was marred by the arrests and jailing of what the opposition said were thousands of Hasina opponents, including six candidates for Parliament.
“Hasina’s use of the state machinery to subjugate the opposition virtually ensures her electoral victory,” said Sasha Riser-kositsky, a South Asia analyst for the New York-based Eurasia Group.
Hasina has expressed confidence in the outcome, inviting election observers and foreign journalists to her official residence on Monday, when the results were expected to be known.
While rights groups have sounded the alarms about the erosion of Bangladesh’s democracy, Hasina has promoted a different narrative, highlighting an ambitious economic agenda that has propelled Bangladesh past larger neighbours Pakistan and India by some development measures.
Voters “will give us another opportunity to serve them so that we can maintain our upward trend of development, and take Bangladesh forward as a developing country,” Hasina said after casting her ballot along with her daughter and sister in Dhaka.
Hasina’s main rival is former prime minister Khaleda Zia, the leader of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, who a court deemed ineligible to run for office because she is in prison for corruption.
The two women have been in and out of power — and prison — for decades.
In Zia’s absence, opposition parties formed a coalition led by Hossain, an 82-year-old Oxford-educated lawyer and former member of Hasina’s Awami League party.
Both sides were hoping to avoid a repeat of 2014, when Zia and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party boycotted elections and voter turnout in the South Asian nation of 160 million was only 22 per cent. More than half of the 300 parliamentary seats were uncontested. The Awami League’s landslide victory was met with violence that left at least 22 people dead.
On Sunday, some 104 million people in the Muslim-majority country were eligible to vote, including many young, first-time voters.
Walking with a cane, Hossain cast his vote near his home in Dhaka, saying he was receiving complaints about vote-tampering and intimidation from various parts of the country.
The more than 40,000 polling stations nationwide closed at 4 p.m., as the Islamic call to prayer came over loudspeakers.
At a polling station in the ancient city of Panam Nagar, about 20 kilometres southeast of Dhaka, the counting of the roughly 1,600 votes cast began immediately after voting ended.
Plastic bins full of paper ballots were dumped onto a sheet on the floor, where 10 people sat in a circle to organize and count the votes.