Awami alliance in landslide win

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s party won almost 90 per cent of the seats to give the premier an unprecedented fourth term in a vote marked by tight security, violence and a crackdown on the opposition.

Election Commission Secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed said the ruling Awami League-led alliance won 288 seats while Jatiya Party led by former president H.M.Ershad had 20 seats.

An opposition alliance led by prominent lawyer Kamal Hossain had only 7 and others got 3 out of 300 seats. Election to one seat was not held and results for another seat were halted by the commission.

The results mean Hasina will form the government for the third consecutive time, even as the opposition claims her leadership has become increasingly authoritarian.

The opposition has rejected the election results, with Hossain calling the election farcical and demanding that a new election be held under the authority of a ‘‘non-partisan government.’’

More than a dozen people were killed in election-related violence and the campaign preceding the vote had been dogged by allegations of arrests and jailing of thousands of Hasina’s opponents.

Hossain said a few hours after voting ended that about 100 candidates from the alliance had withdrawn from their races during the day.

‘‘We call upon the Election Commission to declare this election void and demand a fresh election under a nonpartisan government,’’ Hossain told reporters at a nationally broadcast news conference.

Calls to several Hasina aides seeking comment were not immediately returned yesterday.

Bangladesh’s leading Englishlanguage newspaper, the Daily Star, said 16 people were killed in 13 districts in election-related violence.

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 for decades has been 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.

In Zia’s absence, opposition parties formed a coalition led by Hossain, an 82-year-old Oxfordeducated lawyer and former member of Hasina’s Awami League party. – Bloomberg, AP