Landslide win for ex-PM Hasina in Bangladesh poll
BANGLADESH: Bangla -desh’s former premier Sheikh Hasina Wajed
won the country’s first election since 2001 in a landslide Tuesday,
crushing her bitter rival to retake power in the impoverished south
Asian nation.
The election commission said Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party had
won 229 of the 295 seats in parliament counted so far, giving her an
overwhelming win in Monday’s vote with just a handful of results still
to be tallied.
“She has a clear majority to govern without any other party,”
commission spokesman S.M. Asaduzzaman told AFP.
Her rival Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which won
the last election in 2001 by a huge margin, garnered only 27 seats in
the ballot, which ended two years of rule by an army-backed caretaker
government.
“There have been a lot of irregularities,” BNP spokesman Rizvi Ahmed
said. “Our supporters have been kept from voting, and our polling agents
and officials have been barred from performing their duties.”
Sheikh Hasina and Zia, known as the battling begums, ruled
alternately from 1991 until the interim government was installed, and
their bitter personal rivalry has been blamed for paralysing political
life in the country.
The caretaker regime made efforts to shake up the system, and went so
far as to jail both women for corruption, but agreed to release them to
contest the election.
Although polling was peaceful, there are concerns that the
restoration of democracy will see the country slip back into the
negative, confrontational politics of the past.
Newspapers hailed Sheikh Hasina’s performance, with the
English-language Daily Star describing the win as “stunning” proof that
the country was “hungry for change.”
A UN-funded digital electoral roll, which eliminated 12.7 million
fake names, appeared to have put a lid on the widespread vote rigging
seen in previous polls, observers said. Manzoor Hasan, director of BRAC
University’s Institute of Governance Studies in Dhaka, said the next 48
hours would determine whether or not the BNP accepted the result.
He also warned that with such a big majority, Sheikh Hasina carried
an enormous responsibility.
“This is the danger of an absolute majority with any government. The
possibility that it will steamroll the opposition and do whatever the
government wants to do,” he said.
The election attracted a record voter turnout of 85 percent, with the
figure reaching 90 percent in rural areas, the Election Commission said.
A team of south Asian poll monitors concluded that voting had been
“free, fair and transparent,” while EU observers also said procedures
had been correctly followed.
“All Bangladeshis can take great pride in the success of these
elections,” the US State Department said in a statement on its website.
“The high voter turnout underscores the people’s desire to see
democracy restored as well to have a voice in their future,” the
statement said.
The Islamic party Jamaat-e-Islami, the BNP’s key partner, was way
down on the 17 seats it garnered in 2001, winning just two this time.
The army-backed government took power in January 2007 following months
of political unrest in which at least 35 people were killed.
Some 50,000 troops had been on alert nationwide during Monday’s
voting, while 600,000 police officers were deployed to crack down on
fraud or disruption at the 35,000 polling booths.
DHAKA, Tuesday, AFP |