Whichever way you look at it Bangladesh's ruling Awami League, in power for a decade, has pulled off a magnificent election victory that now gives it a mandate to rule for an unprecedented third consecutive term of five years.

Against a ragtag coalition eviscerated by the absence in the campaign of the jailed opposition figure Khaleda Zia and her son, holed up in London to escape charges of corruption and conspiracy to murder, the courtly figure of Mr Kamal Hossain, an Independence-era figure now in his 80s, failed to muster much enthusiasm despite the anti-incumbency sentiments that you would ordinarily expect a decade-old regime to attract.