Bangladesh PM Hasina secures fifth term after polls without opposition

Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has swept to a fifth term as expected with her party winning an absolute majority in the general election, the poll body said, amid low turnout in the vote boycotted by the main opposition.

While the Election Commission has been slow to announce the results of Sunday's election, TV stations with journalists across the country reported on Monday the Awami League won 224 seats out of 299.

On the other side, Independent candidates — many of them Awami League party members of various ranks — took 62, while the Jatiya Party, the third largest in the country, took 11 seats and the Kallyan Party got 1. The results for the rest of the constituencies were still coming in.

The election was held in 299 out of 300 parliamentary seats. In one seat, the election was postponed as required by law after an independent candidate died.

A final official declaration from the Election Commission is expected on Monday.

The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), who participated in the 2018 vote but kept away in 2014, boycotted the polls after Hasina refused their demands to resign and allow a neutral authority to oversee the general election.

One-party rule

The daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh who was killed in an army coup in 1975 along with most members of the family, Hasina, 76, first became prime minister in 1996.

In her past 15 years in power she has been credited with turning around the economy and the massive garments industry, while winning international praise for sheltering the Rohingya community fleeing persecution in neighbouring Myanmar.

Bangladeshis largely stayed away from Sunday's election, which was marred by violence. Turnout was about 40 percent when polls closed, said Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal, compared with over 80 percent in the last election in 2018.

Hasina herself bagged 249,962 votes from her constituency Gopalganj, about 165 kilometres (103 miles) south of the capital Dhaka, while her nearest rival secured just 469 votes.

Rights groups warned of a virtual one-party rule by Hasina's Awami League in the South Asian country of more than 170 million people while the United States and Western nations, key customers of Bangladesh's garment industry, had called for a free and fair election, the 12th since the country's independence from Pakistan in 1971.

"I am trying my best to ensure that democracy should continue in this country," Hasina said on Sunday after casting her vote, adding that her only accountability was to citizens of Bangladesh.

She has instructed party leaders and supporters not to bring out any victory processions or indulge in celebrations, said Awami League's general secretary Obaidul Quader.

'Dummy' election

The BNP has accused the ruling party of propping up "dummy" independent candidates to try to make the election look credible, a claim the Awami League has denied.

The BNP called a two-day strike nationwide through Sunday, asking people to shun the election, and said the low turnout was a success for their boycott call.

Hasina has accused the opposition of instigating anti-government protests that have rocked Dhaka since late October and killed at least 14 people.

At least four people were killed on Friday in a passenger train fire that the government called arson. Several polling booths, schools and a Buddhist monastery were also set ablaze days before the poll.

Critics accuse Hasina of authoritarianism, human rights violations, crackdowns on free speech and suppression of dissent.

The economy has also slowed sharply since the Russia-Ukraine conflict pushed up prices of fuel and food imports, forcing Bangladesh to turn last year to the International Monetary Fund for a $4.7 billion bailout.