Bangladesh: Awami League Wins Elections Boycotted By Opposition

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party will return to power for an unprecedented fourth consecutive term in Bangladesh after being declared the winner of Sunday’s general election, which drew a low turnout amid an opposition boycott.

Early Monday (local time), preliminary results released by the Election Commission showed that the Awami League had won at least 222 out of 300 parliamentary seats, enough to form a super majority and again govern the South Asian nation of 170 million people.

With more than 294 seats declared, the Jatiya Party – an ally of the ruling party and the only other notable party contesting the election – won only 11, while independent candidates aligned with the Awami League secured victories in 61 parliamentary constituencies.

The result effectively rubber-stamped an outcome that had been predicted long before, after the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies declared they were boycotting the country’s 12th general election. Thiers was an act of protest against Hasina’s refusal to give in to their demand that she step aside to allow a neutral caretaker administration to oversee the election.

Polling centers closed at 4 p.m. local time on Sunday, with more than half of the country’s nearly 120 million eligible voters choosing to stay at home.

Voter turnout was estimated to be around 40%, said chief election commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal, which was still a significant jump from 26% an hour earlier.

Local media reported instances of ballot stuffing – some of which were canceled by the election commission.

Hasina, 76, cast her ballot at Dhaka City College Center in the capital as soon as polls opened at 8 a.m.

“Your vote is very valuable,” she said after voting, accompanied by her daughter and sister. “We fought a lot for the right to vote, and I hope that all the people of the country will come to vote at the polling centers. Bangladesh will continue its democratic trend.”

The parliamentary election, which is the 12th since Bangladesh fought a bloody war for independence from Pakistan in 1971, has been overshadowed by political unrest and mass arrests in the run-up to the vote.

Tens of thousands of opposition leaders and activists – including the BNP’s secretary general and other top leaders – have reportedly been arrested since Oct. 28 alone, when the party staged the last in a series of rallies demanding a neutral caretaker government be put in place to oversee the polls.

At least 39 people – mostly from the opposition – have died in political violence since then.

The BNP, which called for nationwide strikes at the weekend, said the opposition boycott had been successful.

“The whole world has seen that this is a sham election,” spokesman Abdul Moyeen told journalists. “All major parties have snubbed the elections.”

Scattered incidents of violence were reported across the country on Sunday.

Police said Zillur Rahman, a 40-year-old supporter of the Awami League, was killed by supporters of a rival independent candidate outside a polling center in Mirkadim municipality, south of Dhaka.

Another man, Nawab Al, 60, reportedly died in a scuffle outside a voting station in Debidwar, Comilla district, according to The Daily Star, quoting police.

Elsewhere, three people were injured by a homemade bomb detonated at a polling center in the Dhaka neighborhood of Hazaribagh, said Bachchu Mia, the chief police officer at Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

Police in the port city of Chittagong said they had fired shotguns to break up a rally of up to 60 opposition members who had blocked a road using burning tires, adding that no one was injured, AFP news agency reported.

Some 800,000 police and armed forces personnel have been deployed to safeguard law and order for the general election.

‘No point’

By 3 p.m. – an hour before polls closed – turnout across the nation was just 27.15%, according to Election Commission secretary Jahangir Alam.

Abdus Sattar, a resident of Dhaka’s Shaheenbag neighborhood, said he would not participate because the election was uncompetitive.

“I came here to see how the vote is going,” Sattar told BenarNews. “I will not vote as there is no point. The ruling party is already the winner.”

But other voters took the opportunity to cast a ballot. Anwar Hossain, who was voting in the Dhaka-12 constituency in Shaheenbag, said he supported the ruling Awami League. 

“This government has done a lot of development for the country,” Hossain, 42, told BenarNews.

Kakoli Begum, 55, from the Dhaka-16 constituency, said voting was the only way to change the government. 

“The election commission assured us that there would be fair polls. So I came here to vote,” she told BenarNews. “There is no violence, but the presence of voters is very thin.”

In recent months, the United States and other Western countries have ramped up calls to demand that free and fair elections be held in Bangladesh. Washington has threatened visa restrictions on Bangladeshis whom it suspects of undermining the legitimacy of the vote. 

But Hasina, the daughter of the country’s founding father, has largely ignored the pressure. 

Since 2009, she has presided over a crackdown on dissent, notably against opposition parties and civil society. 

Under her watch, local and international advocacy groups, including Human Rights Watch, have documented alleged abuses by Bangladesh authorities, including mass arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearance, torture, extrajudicial killings, and widespread repression.

Hasina also acknowledged that her 14-year interrupted rule may have been flawed.

“If I’ve made any mistakes along the way, my request to you will be to look at the matter with the eyes of forgiveness,” BSS quoted her as saying.

“If I can form the government again, I will get a chance to correct the mistakes. Give me an opportunity to serve you by voting for the ‘Boat’ in the January 7 election,” she said, referring to her party’s symbol.

For many voters, the cost of living is a key concern. Food inflation has been stubbornly high in recent months, while power cuts and fuel-price hikes have added to consumer woes. 

Until relatively recently, Hasina had presided over one of the region’s best-performing economies, largely on the back of the country’s booming textile and garment industry.

But Bangladesh’s post-pandemic recovery stuttered, and it was forced to approach the International Monetary Fund for a bailout. 

In December, the IMF board agreed to provide Bangladesh with $4.7 billion of loans to stabilize the economy, which has come under pressure from currency depreciation and a decline in foreign exchange reserves. 

Sunday’s one-sided election sets the stage for more violence in the post-voting period because of growing discontent with the incumbent government and high inflation, the International Crisis Group said in a report on Thursday.