Bangladesh’s ruling alliance won virtually every parliamentary seat in the nation’s general election, according to official results released early yesterday, giving Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina a third consecutive term, despite allegations of intimidation and the opposition disputing the outcome.
The coalition led by Hasina’s Awami League won 288 out of 300 seats — 96 percent — in Sunday’s poll, Bangladeshi Election Commission Secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed said.
The opposition alliance led by prominent lawyer Kamal Hossain won only seven seats.
The opposition rejected the outcome, with Hossain calling the election “farcical” and demanding a new election be held under the authority of a “nonpartisan government.”
The opposition claims Hasina’s leadership has become increasingly authoritarian.
More than a dozen people were killed in election-related violence on Sunday, and the campaign preceding the vote had been dogged by allegations of arrests and jailing of thousands of Hasina’s opponents.
Hossain late on Sunday said that about 100 candidates from the alliance had withdrawn from their races during the day. He said the alliance would yesterday hold a meeting to decide its next course of action.
“We call upon the election commission to declare this election void and demand a fresh election under a nonpartisan government,” Hossain told reporters at a nationally broadcast news conference.
Calls to several Hasina aides seeking comment were not immediately returned.
A headline in a Bangladeshi English-language newspaper, the Daily Star, read, “Hat-trick for Hasina, BNP [Bangladesh Nationalist Party] found missing in polling; atmosphere festive, tuned only to ruling party.”
In an editorial, the newspaper said “this was a one-sided election.”
“The blatant and starkest manifestation of an uneven state of affairs was the absence of polling agents of the opposition ... in most, if not almost all, of the polling centers in the country,” it said.
Hasina’s main rival for decades has been former Bangladeshi prime minister Khaleda Zia, the leader of the BNP, who a court deemed ineligible to run for office because she is in prison for corruption.
In Zia’s absence, the opposition parties formed a coalition led by Hossain, an 82-year-old University of Oxford-educated lawyer and former member of Hasina’s Awami League.
BNP Secretary-General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir won a seat in a twist victory. Alamgir is a fierce critic of Hasina and he spearheaded the formation of the opposition alliance with Hossain at the helm.
Alamgir on Sunday said he was rejecting any outcome, but it was unknown after his win was declared what he would do.
In the buildup to the election, activists from both the ruling party and the opposition complained of attacks on supporters and candidates.
The Daily Star said 16 people were killed in 13 districts in election-related violence on Sunday.
The Associated Press received more than 50 calls from people across the nation who identified themselves as opposition supporters complaining of intimidation and threats, and being forced to vote in front of ruling party members inside polling booths.
While rights groups have sounded the alarms about the erosion of Bangladesh’s democracy, Hasina has promoted a different narrative, highlighting an ambitious economic agenda that has propelled Bangladesh past larger neighbors Pakistan and India by some development measures.
Voters “will give us another opportunity to serve them so that we can maintain our upward trend of development and take Bangladesh forward as a developing country,” Hasina said after casting her ballot along with her daughter and sister.
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