PM Hasina wins vote amid low turnout and opposition 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 Sunday’s election [yesterday, Macau time], TV stations with journalists across the country reported the Awami League won 224 seats out of 299. Independent candidates took 62, while the Jatiya Party, the third largest in the country, took 11 seats and Kallyan Party got 1. The results for the rest of the constituencies were still coming in.

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 [Macau time].

At least 18 arson attacks preceded the vote but the election day passed in relative calm. Turnout was around 40%, 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 Zia’s party and its allied groups. They accuse Hasina of turning Bangladesh into a one-party 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.

On Sunday, a supporter of an Awami League candidate was stabbed to death in Munshiganj district near the capital, Dhaka, officials said. Police did not comment immediately.

A victory for the 76-year-old 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 Hasina’s Awami League and the BNP, led by 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 polarized Bangladesh’s politics and fueled violence around elections. This year’s vote raised questions over its credibility when there are no major challengers to take on the incumbent.

Badshah Mia, a rickshaw puller in Dhaka, said he wouldn’t vote given the limited choices, adding that the atmosphere didn’t exude that of “a fair election.”

Sakibul Hasan Chowdhury, a businessman, felt the same. “There is no opposition and no candidate of my choice. So how would I benefit from voting?”

A small business owner, Habibur Rahman, said he was voting for the ruling party candidate in his constituency but added that there didn’t seem to be much of a turnout.

Critics and rights groups say the vote follows a troubling pattern, where the past two elections held under Hasina were sullied by allegations of vote-rigging — which authorities have denied — and another boycott by opposition parties.

The government has rejected a monthslong demand by the BNP to have a neutral caretaker government administer Sunday’s vote. MDT/AP