BANGLADESH ELECTION

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. See BANGLADESH on NP4

ANUPAM NATH / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Voters line up outside a polling station in Dhaka, Bangladesh on Sunday. The parliamentary election, seen as a referendum on what critics call Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s increasingly authoritarian rule, was tainted by violence and allegations of vote-rigging. By day’s end, Hasina and her Awami League were headed for a landslide third term.