Bangladesh’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina wins fifth term
Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has won re-election for a fifth term, officials said, after a boycott led by an opposition party she called a “terrorist organisation”.
Hasina’s ruling Awami League “has won the election”, an Election Commission spokesperson told AFP in the early hours of Monday, after a vote that initial reports suggested had a turnout of as low as 40%.
She has presided over breakneck economic growth in a country once beset by grinding poverty, but her government has been accused of rampant human rights abuses and a ruthless opposition crackdown.
Her party faced almost no effective rivals in the seats it contested but it avoided fielding candidates in a few constituencies, in an apparent effort to avoid the legislature being called a oneparty institution.
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), whose ranks have been decimated by mass arrests, called a general strike and, along with dozens of others, refused to participate in a “sham election”.
While the final result and exact figures will be formally announced at a ceremony later on Monday, election commission officials said Hasina’s party had won around three-quarters of seats, at least 220 of the total 300.
But support of other lawmakers including from allied parties could push her control over parliament even higher.
Hasina, 76, had called for citizens to show faith in the democratic process.
“The BNP is a terrorist organisation,” she told reporters after casting her vote. “I am trying my best to ensure that democracy should continue in this country.”
First-time voter Amit Bose, 21, said he had cast his ballot for his “favourite candidate”, but others said they had not bothered because the outcome was assured.
“When one party is participating and another is not, why would I go to vote?” said rickshaw-puller Mohammad Saidur, 31.
The BNP chair, Tarique Rahman, speaking from Britain where he lives in exile, told AFP he feared “fake votes” would be used to boost voter turnout.
“What unfolded was not an election, but rather a disgrace to the democratic aspirations of Bangladesh,” he wrote on social media, alleging he had seen “disturbing pictures and videos” backing his claims.
Among the victors was Shakib Al
Hasan, the Bangladesh cricket team captain, who won his seat for Hasina’s party in a landslide, local officials said.
The BNP and other parties staged months of protests last year, demanding Hasina step down before the vote. Officers in the port city of Chattogram broke up an opposition protest on Sunday, firing shotguns and teargas canisters.
But election officials said voting was largely peaceful, with nearly 800,000 police officers and soldiers deployed countrywide.
Meenakshi Ganguly, from Human Rights Watch, said on Sunday that the government had failed to reassure opposition supporters that the polls would be fair, warning that “many fear a further crackdown”.
Politics in the country of 170 million people 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 has been the decisive victor since returning to power in a 2009 landslide, with two subsequent polls accompanied by widespread irregularities and accusations of rigging.
Zia, 78, was convicted of graft in 2018 and is now in ailing health at a hospital in Dhaka. BNP head Rahman is her son.