Opposition parties had boycotted the elections by alleging fraud and a crackdown.
Dhaka: In the controversial general elections in Bangladesh, the ruling party Awami League has achieved success for the fifth consecutive time.
According to the Election Commission, Hussain Waqad’s Awami League and its allies won 223 out of 300 seats in parliament, while independent candidates were successful in 63 seats and the nationalist party was able to win 11 seats.
These winning independent candidates are also leaders of the Awami League who had not received tickets from the party, and Hussain Waqad had told them to stand as “dummy candidates” so that this election could be shown transparently to the international community.
Thus Husna Wajid’s path to becoming Prime Minister for another five years has become smooth. According to official claims, the voter turnout was only 40%. But critics are expressing doubts about this claim after images of empty polling stations without voters emerged.
Engineer Abdullah Yousuf of Dhammandi, a suburb of Dhaka, told Al Jazeera, “I don’t know about the rest of the country, but I feel like I’ve never seen Dhaka so empty in my life, it felt like a lockdown like the coronavirus.” I passed by two polling stations at noon and did not see anyone except workers of the Awami League. The claim of 40% turnover is purely ridiculous.”
Opposition leaders and workers were subjected to a large-scale crackdown before the elections, and violent clashes and commotion also took place during polling yesterday.
The largest opposition party, the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), had boycotted the elections, alleging fraud, a crackdown, and the use of foul play to exclude them from the elections.
The head of the Bangladesh National Party, Khalid Zia and other top leaders have been in jail for many years, while the opposition party also alleged that the government is arresting their candidates and local leaders, including workers.
Talking to Al Jazeera, Shahid Al Alam, a prominent activist and photographer working for human rights in Bangladesh, said, “This is a strange result of an absurd election.” “In the fake election, the dummy candidates will now make a fake parliament.”
Analysts say this “one-sided election” was merely a “formal” effort to bring Hussain back to power.
Former Election Commissioner Sakhawat Hossain said, “It is difficult to believe that the turnout was 40%, especially given the fact that the Chief Election Commissioner himself briefed the media first and said 28%, and then quickly changed it to 40%.”
Al Jazeera also verified that during the media briefing, the Election Commission headquarters’ dashboard showed a 28% turnout, which was suddenly changed to 40%.
Sharmeen Mushad, the head of the organization, Brotee, which monitors elections, also said that the jump from 27 to 40% within an hour is “laughable” and has severely tarnished the Election Commission’s credibility.
She said, “This was not an election, but rather an exercise in voting for oneself by a party.”
The human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) says that during the government crackdown, more than 10,000 opposition workers were arrested, multiple people were killed, and thousands were injured within just a few months.