1 of 2 | Women line up to cast their vote at Dhaka polling center Sunday, January 7, 2024, in a parliamentary election that delivered a fourth straight victory to the ruling Awami League party headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Photo by Monirul Alam/EPA-EFE
Jan. 8 (UPI) — Voters handed Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina a fourth consecutive five-year term in an election boycotted by the opposition after a campaign marred by political repression and violence amid fears the country is descending into a one-party state.
Provisional results show Hasina’s Awami League and its coalition partners won 223 of 300 parliamentary seats, but only about 40% of the 120 million people eligible to vote turned out, Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal said at a press briefing Sunday.
But Hasina shrugged off the growing divisions saying that safeguarding democracy was her number one concern.
“Our country is a sovereign and independent country — maybe we’re small but we have a big population,” she told reporters in Dhaka.
“We have established people’s democratic rights and also the right to a better life. That is our main aim. I want to make sure that democracy should continue in this country. Without democracy, you cannot make any development,” said Hasina, who has been in office since 2009 but first became prime minister in 1996.
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which alleges its entire leadership and thousands of supporters were jailed in the run-up to the poll, refused to field candidates calling it a phony election.
Six have died in prison with many more tortured, according to the party whose acting chairman lives in London in exile. The former prime minister and BNP leader Khaleda Zia has been either in prison or under house arrest since 2018.
Human Rights Watch, which estimates almost 10,000 BNP supporters were detained after an opposition rally on Oct. 28 at which 16 people and 5,500 were injured, accused Hasina’s administration of “filling prisons with the Awami League’s political opponents”.
In September, the U.S. Department of State imposed visa restrictions on individuals it said were responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process in Bangladesh including current and former officials, members of the ruling party, the opposition, judiciary, security services and law enforcement.
“These persons and members of their immediate family may be found ineligible for entry into the United States,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
Hasina begins her fifth term facing a raft of problems including an economic crisis forcing Bangladesh to seek a $4.7 billion bailout from the IMF, the second $689 million tranche of which was approved just weeks before the election, amid high inflation and a plunge in the value of its taka currency.
