The Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, 76, has obtained a fourth consecutive term in power, the country's electoral commission reported this Monday, with her party, the ruling Awami League, achieving almost 75% of the seats in contention in the general elections held this Sunday. The elections were marked by the boycott of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), and by the low participation in the electoral event.
According to preliminary results published by the Electoral Commission, the Awami League has obtained 223 seats out of a total of 298, results lackluster due to an abstention of around 60% of the electorate. At the time of the closing of the polls, participation amounted to only 40% of voters, according to the head of the electoral commission, Kazi Habibul Awal. In the previous elections, in 2018, in which the main opposition formation did participate, that percentage of turnout at the polls stood at 80%. The BNP had called for abstention after Hasina rejected his request that he resign and consent to a neutral authority supervising the holding of the elections.
Daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, considered the founding father of Bangladesh—killed in an army coup in 1975 along with most of his family members—Hasina, 76, became prime minister in 1996. Following her victory in This Sunday, he will now begin his fifth term, the fourth consecutive since since 2009 he has never left power in that Asian country of around 170 million inhabitants.
In her last 15 years as prime minister, she has been credited with turning around the country's economy and huge textile industry, while earning international praise for welcoming Rohingya Muslims fleeing the persecution in neighboring Myanmar. Her critics accuse her, however, of authoritarianism, human rights violations, repression of freedom of expression and dissent. His party, the Awami League, had virtually no rivals in the electoral districts in which it participates, but, in some of them, it did not field candidates, a strategy that is interpreted as a way to prevent the unicameral Parliament from being seen as the instrument of a single party.
Human rights groups had warned before the elections against the authoritarian drift of the Bangladeshi government, where the BNP, like other minor formations, have been decimated by a massive wave of arrests. In 2023, some 25,000 opposition leaders, including all local BNP leaders, were arrested in a wave of repression that followed a series of protests, during which several people were killed in clashes with police, according to that party. The Government then reported 11,000 arrests.
On the eve of the elections, the police arrested seven opponents, accusing them of having started a fire on a freight train in which four people died. Since last year there have been several attacks against the railway network, “deadly acts of sabotage” according to the police, who attribute responsibility to members of the main opposition party. This formation denies any involvement in these events and accuses the authorities of being behind these fires in order to accuse and imprison opponents.
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Along with the BNP, dozens of parties opposed to the Government decided not to participate in the elections, since they considered that they would not be free or honest. They also feared that the irregularities of the previous elections, also won by the prime minister, would be repeated.
Hasina, for her part, called on voters to go to the polls to show their confidence in the democratic process. “The BNP is a terrorist organization,” she told reporters on Sunday after voting in Dhaka, the capital. A statement that came after opponents of the Government called for a general strike for the weekend and urged the population not to vote. “I am doing everything possible to guarantee that democracy continues in this country,” said the president, promising “free and fair” elections.
Some voters have claimed to have been threatened with confiscation of their government benefit cards, needed to obtain welfare benefits, if they refused to vote for the Awami League. “They said that since the Government feeds us, we should vote for it,” Lal Mia, 64, told the France Presse agency.
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