Hasina wins huge majority in Bangladesh amid boycott
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has won an overwhelming majority in Bangladesh’s parliamentary election after a campaign fraught with violence and a boycott from the main opposition party, giving her and her Awami League a fourth consecutive term.
While the Election Commission has been slow to announce the results of yesterday’s election, TV stations with networks of journalists across the country reported that the Awami League won 216 seats out of 299.
Independentcandidatestook 52 seats, while the Jatiya Party, the third largest in the country, took 11.
The results for the rest of the constituencies were still coming in late on Sunday night.
The election was held in 299 out of 300 parliamentary seats.
In one seat, the election was postponed as required by law after an independent candidate died.
A final official declaration from the Election Commission is expected today.
At least 18 arson attacks preceded the vote but the election day passed in relative calm.
Turnout was around 40 per cent, chief election commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal said after the polls closed.
The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party led by former premier Khaleda Zia refused to accept the election outcome, saying Bangladeshi voters have rejected the government’s one-sided election.
Security incidents, including four deaths in an arson attack on a passenger train on Friday, intensified tensions ahead of the election that was shunned by Ms Zia’s party and its allied groups.
They accuse Ms Hasina of turning Bangladesh into a oneparty state and muzzling dissent and civil society.
Authorities blamed much of the violence on the BNP, accusing it of seeking to sabotage the election.
On Saturday, detectives arrested seven men belonging to the BNP and its youth wing for their alleged involvement in the train attack. The party denied any role in the incident.
Yesterday, a supporter of an Awami League candidate was stabbed to death in Munshiganj district near the capital Dhaka, officials said.
A victory for 76-yearold Ms Hasina, the country’s longest-serving leader and one of its most consequential, would come with a deeply contentious political landscape.
The vote, like previous elections, has been defined by the bitter rivalry between Ms Hasina’s Awami League and the BNP, led by Ms Zia, who is ailing and under house arrest on corruption charges, which her supporters claim are politically motivated.
The two women ran the country alternately for many years, cementing a feud that has since polarised Bangladesh’s politics and fuelled violence around elections.
This year’s vote raised questions over its credibility when therearenomajorchallengers to take on the incumbent.
Critics and rights groups say the vote follows a troubling pattern, where the past two elections held under Ms Hasina were sullied by allegations of vote-rigging.
Vote raises questions over its credibility when there are no major challengers