Bangladesh election officials are counting votes after a controversial election, plagued by violence and boycotted by the opposition, guaranteed a fourth consecutive term for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Most Bangladeshis stayed away from Sunday’s vote as initial signs suggested low turnout, despite widespread reports of carrot-and-stick incentives aimed at bolstering the vote’s legitimacy.
“The counting of votes has begun,” said election commission spokesman Shariful Alam. Results are expected Monday morning.
Turnout was 27.15 percent at 3:00 p.m. (0900 GMT), an hour before polls closed, the electoral commission said, compared with an overall turnout of more than 80 percent in the polls. last elections of 2018.
Voting was canceled at three centers due to irregularities, said Jahangir Alam, secretary of the commission.
Independent election observer and civil society activist Badul Alam Majumder told Al Jazeera that he did not consider the vote to be a “proper election at all”.
“It has a very low turnout, probably the lowest I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said, adding that his organization did not officially oversee this year’s vote.
Hasina, 76, urged citizens to vote and show their faith in the democratic process, calling the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), a “terrorist organization.”
Accompanied by her daughter and other family members, Hasina voted at City College in the capital, Dhaka, minutes after the election began.
“Bangladesh is a sovereign country and the people are my power,” he said after voting, adding that he hoped his party would win the people’s mandate, which would give it a fifth term since 1996.
“I am doing everything I can to ensure that democracy continues in this country.”
The BNP, whose ranks have been decimated by mass arrests, called a two-day national strike until Sunday, urging people not to take part in what it called a “sham” election.
BNP chief Tarique Rahman, speaking from Britain where he lives in exile, said he was worried about vote stuffing.
“I fear that the electoral commission could increase voter turnout by using fake votes,” he told the AFP news agency.
Hasina last year rejected BNP demands to resign and allow a neutral authority to conduct the elections, accusing the opposition of instigating anti-government protests that have rocked the capital since late October and killed at least 14 people.
Human rights groups have warned of virtual one-party rule by Hasina’s Awami League in the South Asian country of 170 million people after a boycott by the BNP and some smaller allies.
Tanvir Chowdhury, Al Jazeera correspondent in Dhaka, said there was a “lack of interest and enthusiasm” among people.
“The city is quiet and gloomy. Nobody wants to speak freely on camera. People say off the record that this is all very predictable. “They are not inclusive elections.”
At least four people died Friday in a fire on a passenger train that the government called an arson. Days before the elections, several polling stations, schools and a Buddhist monastery were burned down.
A person in Munshiganj, south of the capital Dhaka, was hacked to death on Sunday morning, district police chief Mohammad Aslam Khan said, adding that it was unclear whether the killing was linked to political violence.
Police in Chandpur district, about 110 kilometers (70 miles) from Dhaka, fired tear gas to disperse BNP supporters who had blocked roads to disrupt the vote and threw stones at security forces, the chief said. district police, Saiful Islam.
Awami League supporters and independent candidates clashed in some districts, amid accusations that ruling party cadres were stuffing sealed ballot papers into ballot boxes, local media reported.
Bangladesh deployed nearly 800,000 security forces to protect polling stations and troops were mobilized across the country to help keep the peace.
Some 120 million voters chose from almost 2,000 candidates for 300 directly elected parliamentary seats. There are 436 independent candidates, the most since 2001.
The opposition BNP, whose top leaders are in prison or in exile, says the Awami League has propped up “dummy” candidates such as independents to try to make elections look credible, a claim the ruling party denies.
Hasina said she did not need to prove to anyone the credibility of the elections. “The important thing is whether the people of Bangladesh will accept these elections.”
Politics in the world’s eighth most populous country has long been dominated by the rivalry between Hasina, the daughter of the country’s founding leader, and two-time Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, the wife of a former military ruler.
Hasina is credited with transforming Bangladesh’s economy and the important textile industry. But critics accuse her of authoritarianism, human rights violations, suppression of free speech and repression of dissent.
His Awami League party faced almost no effective challengers in the seats it contested, but avoided fielding candidates in a few constituencies, an apparent effort to avoid the legislature being branded a one-party institution.
Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center, said neither candidate could pose much of a challenge to Hasina’s party.
“The result is practically guaranteed, and that is that the Awami League will return [to power] again,” he said. “Bangladesh’s democracy will be in an extremely precarious state once the elections are over.”
