Hasina claims victory in Bangladesh poll after winning 223 out of 299 seats
Bangladesh’s incumbent Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina secured a fifth term after her Awami League Party won an absolute majority in elections fraught with violence and a boycott by the main opposition party and its allies.
The South Asian nation held day-long elections on Sunday for 299 seats to elect a prime minister.
Ms Hasina’s party won 223 of them, Rafiqullah Romel, of the Awami League election monitoring committee, told
The National.
The Jatiya Party, an alliance against the Awami League, won 11 seats, while independent candidates landed 62. Three alliance partners together won three seats, Mr Romel said.
About 120 million voters were choosing from nearly 2,000 candidates for 300 directly elected parliamentary seats. There were 436 independent candidates, the highest number since 2001.
Ms Hasina’s victory means the 76-year-old politician will become the world’s longest-serving female head of government.
The daughter of the founding father of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Ms Hasina became Prime Minister in 1996.
The Awami League rose to power with a landslide election triumph in 2009 and won its second term in 2014. It was re-elected for the third term in 2018.
The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by former prime minister Khaleda Zia, boycotted the elections and asked people not to vote after Ms Hasina refused the BNP’s demands to resign and allow a neutral authority to run the election.
Several of its allies called the polls “sham elections” and refused to participate. Ms Hasina had accused the opposition of instigating anti-government protests that have rocked the capital Dhaka since late October, and in which at least 14 people have been killed.
“I am trying my best to ensure that democracy should continue in this country,” she said after casting her vote.
The polls were marred by lower voting turnout – only 40 per cent was recorded, the chief election commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal announced, compared to 80 per cent in 2018.
Voting was cancelled at three centres due to irregularities.
More than 800,000 security forces were sent to guard polling booths and troops were mobilised nationwide to assist in maintaining peace.
Bangladesh, with a population of 174 million people, has become one of the fastest-growing economies.
It aims to become an upper middle-income country by 2031 and a developed country by 2041.