Dhaka: Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday dismissed the opposition’s criticism of the country’s general election as “illegitimate” as she celebrated securing her fifth term in power.
Hasina has presided over breakneck economic growth in a country once beset by grinding poverty, but her government has been accused of rampant human rights abuses and a ruthless crackdown on dissent.
“The election was free and fair,” she told reporters in her first comments since the vote on Sunday, where her party took three-quarters of seats in parliament after polls boycotted by the opposition, with turnout at a meagre 41.8 percent.
“If any party does not participate in the election, it does not mean there is no democracy,” she said, adding that “those who want to criticise can criticise”. The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which has seen its ranks diminished by mass arrests, called a general strike and, along with dozens of others, refused to participate.
Senior BNP leader Moyeen Khan called it a “fake election” and said the government was “illegitimate”, he told reporters in Dhaka on Monday. Election Commission secretary Moniruzzaman Talukder said Hasina’s party had won 223 seats in Sunday’s polls, but the support of
other lawmakers means her actual control over the 300-seat parliament is even higher, analysts said. “It was a farce election, like a local neighbourhood or a market association election,” said Mohammad Shahin, 42, who pulls a rickshaw.
Hasina, 76, called for citizens to show faith in the democratic process and branded the BNP “a terrorist organisation” after she voted on Sunday.
“This is a one-party parliament,” Ali Riaz of Illinois State University told AFP, adding that “only the allies of the Awami League had the opportunity to participate”. Bangladesh was the first in key South Asian elections this year where embattled opposition parties face a tough battle, including in Pakistan, where jailed former prime minister Imran Khan has been rejected as a candidate, and in neighbouring India.mThe Jatiya Party, which won 11 seats, is a long-time ally of Hasina’s Awami League, as are many of the 61 independent candidates, said Mubashar Hasan, a political scientist at the University of Oslo.