Campaigning for Bangladesh’s general election ended yesterday after weeks of violence, mainly against workers and officials from an opposition alliance, which has drawn criticism from the US and others.
Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League is seeking its third straight term in tomorrow’s elections against the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which boycotted the last vote in 2014.
The Awami League is promoting its economic record over the past decade, but a BNP-led opposition alliance, many of whose leaders have been jailed, has vowed to remove curbs on the media, increase wages and freeze energy prices.
“The government has lost moral support,” BNP secretary-general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir told reporters on Thursday, urging voters to “restore democracy.”
“But the people are with us. They want change,” he said.
The BNP’s preparations have been hamstrung by the February jailing of its chairwoman, former Bangladeshi prime minister Khaleda Zia, on what the party called trumped-up corruption charges.
Awami League leaders have denied any misuse of power, saying that they would return to government with an overwhelming majority.
Hasina on Thursday told supporters that they must “ensure victory of pro-liberation forces,” a reference to Bangladesh’s war of independence from Pakistan in 1971 led by her father, former Bangladeshi president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
The Economist Intelligence Unit forecast her party to win a third term.
The BNP on Thursday said that more than 8,200 opposition leaders and activists from a coalition of about 20 parties have been arrested since the election schedule was announced early last month.
Four workers were killed and more than 12,300 injured, it said.
The Awami League has in turn said that the BNP and its partners were behind attacks that killed at least six of its workers over the past three weeks.
Police declined to confirm the figures.
Mahbub Talukdar, one of five election commissioners, has said that there has not been a level playing field, although other commissioners have said that they expected the election to be free and fair.
US Ambassador to Bangladesh Earl Miller on Thursday said that all parties had been victims of violence, including women and minority candidates.
“However, it appears opposition party candidates have borne the brunt of most violence,” he said in a statement after meeting Bangladeshi Election Commission officials.
All candidates and voters must be able to take part without “harassment, intimidation or violence,” and an independent media must be allowed to cover the election, Miller said.
The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has ordered the shutdown of high-speed mobile Internet services to curb the spread of “confusing content,” an official said yesterday on condition of anonymity.
“We asked telecom operators to halt 3G and 4G services temporarily on Thursday night. We have done it to prevent propaganda and misleading content spreading on the Internet,” the official said.
High-speed Internet services resumed yesterday morning after a 10-hour blackout, but could be suspended again later in the day, the official said.
Shut out by mainstream media, the BNP has been reduced to social media such as Facebook to lobby for votes.
Its leaders have posted series of videos to canvass support from Bangladesh’s 100 million voters ahead of the election.
Earlier this month, the regulator blocked the BNP Web site, along with 53 news Web sites and portals, including several pro-BNP sites, saying that they spread “obscene” and malicious content.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not