Bangladesh counts votes after election without opposition

DHAKA - Bangladesh election officials began counting votes on Jan 7 after

polls guaranteed to give a fifth term

in office to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina closed, following a boycott led by an opposition party she branded a “terrorist organisation”.

Ms Hasina has presided over exceptional economic growth in a country once beset by grinding poverty, but her government has been accused of rampant human rights abuses and a ruthless opposition crackdown.

Her party faces almost no effective rivals in the seats it is contesting but has avoided fielding candidates in a few seats, an apparent effort to avoid the legislature being branded a one-party institution.

“Vote counting has begun,” election commission spokesman Shariful Alam told AFP.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), whose ranks have been decimated by mass arrests, led a weekend general strike urging the public not to participate in what it calls a “sham” election.

But Ms Hasina, 76, urged the public to cast their ballots and show their faith in the democratic process.

“The BNP is a terrorist organisation,” she told waiting reporters after casting her vote.

“I am trying my best to ensure that democracy should continue in this country,” she added.

Results are expected as early as the morning of Jan 8.

Initial signs suggested turnout would be low, despite widespread reports of carrot-and-stick inducements aimed at bolstering the poll’s legitimacy.

At noon, according to Election Commission Secretary Jahangir Alam, the turnout stood at 18.5 per cent.

Many said they did not vote because the outcome was assured.

 Mr Mohammad Saidur, 31, who pulls a rickshaw, said: “When one party is participating and another is not, why would I go to vote?”

Ms Farhana Manik, 27, a student, said: “We all know who’s going to win.”

Charity worker Shahriar Ahmed, 32, called the election a “farce” and did not vote. “I would rather stay home and watch movies.”

BNP head Tarique Rahman, speaking from Britain where he lives in exile, said he was worried about ballot stuffing.

“I fear that the election commission may increase voter turnout by using fake votes,” he said.

Some voters said earlier that they had been threatened with the confiscation of government benefit cards needed to access welfare payments if they refused to cast ballots for the ruling Awami League.

“They said since the government feeds us, we have to vote for them,” resident Lal Mia, 64, said in the central district of Faridpur.

The BNP and other parties staged months of protests in 2023 demanding Ms Hasina step down ahead of the vote.

Around 25,000 opposition cadres including the BNP’s entire local leadership were arrested in the ensuing crackdown, the party says. The government puts the figure at 11,000.

Small and scattered protests continued in the days ahead of the election – a shadow of

the hundreds of thousands seen at rallies in 2023.

On Jan 7, 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 tyres, adding that no one was injured.

The election commission said nearly 700,000 police officers and reservists had been deployed to keep order during the vote, along with nearly 100,000 members of the armed forces.

Politics in the world’s eighth-most populous country was long dominated by the rivalry between Ms Hasina, the daughter of the country’s founding leader, and two-time premier Khaleda Zia, wife of a former military ruler.

Ms Hasina has been the decisive victor since returning to power in a 2009 landslide, with two subsequent polls accompanied by widespread irregularities and accusations of rigging.

Zia, 78, was convicted of graft in 2018 and is now in ailing health at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, with her son, Mr Rahman, helming the BNP in her stead from exile in London. Mr Rahman told AFP that his party, along with dozens of others, had refused to participate in the “sham election”.

Ms Hasina accused the BNP of arson and sabotage during the 2023 protest campaign, which was mostly peaceful but saw several people killed in police confrontations.

Her government’s security forces have long been dogged by allegations of excessive use of force – charges it denies.

The United States, the biggest export market for the South Asian nation of 170 million, has imposed sanctions on an elite police unit and its top commanders.

Economic headwinds have left many dissatisfied with Ms Hasina’s government, after sharp spikes in food costs and months of chronic blackouts in 2022.

Wage stagnation in the garment sector, which accounts for around 85 per cent of the country’s US$55 billion (S$73 billion) in annual exports, sparked industrial unrest late in 2023 that saw some factories torched and hundreds more shuttered.

Mr Pierre Prakash of the International Crisis Group said Ms Hasina’s government was clearly “less popular than it was a few years ago, yet Bangladeshis have little real outlet at the ballot box”.

“That is a potentially dangerous combination.” AFP