DHAKA: Gen Z’s sacrifice of 1400 lives, during 2004’s 45-day anti-govt protests, forced premier bolt to India, but in 12th Feb polls voters elected BNP’s 60-year-old Black Prince Tarique Rahman.
According to details the process of polling was carried out by Bangladesh Election Commission that held voting in 299 of Bangladesh’s 300 parliamentary constituencies.
Tarique Rahman’s BNP, that bagged 209 seats is all set to form the government. Runner-up Jama’at-e-Islami Bangladesh (JIB), spearheaded by 67-year-old Islamist Shafiqur Rahman, won 68 seats due to its religious façade, otherwise it is not liked by voters due to its pro-West-Pakistan stance during 1971 war of independence. National Citizen Party of Gen Z’s Nahid Islam barely managed of win from six constituencies.
It may be recalled that following the fall of government due to Gen Z revolt, General Wakeruz Zaman, Chief of Bangladesh Army, had said that he and his troops would stand with Muhammad Yunus, come what may, so that he could accomplish his mission.
Three days after the ouster of Sheikh Hasina from the PM House, following bloody protests, a 17-member (including top student leaders Nahid Islam and Asif Mahmud) transitional administration headed by 84-year-old (2006) Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus, took oath on 8th August, 2024.
On his return home from Paris, Yunus exclaimed: “Revolution, through which Bangladesh created a new Victory Day today, should be kept in front and strengthened further and move forward.”
The polls of 7th Jan, 2024 (sans opposition) were reckoned as farce. It was meant to give a fifth term in office to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. The elections were boycotted by an opposition party she branded a “terrorist organisation”.
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 opposition crackdown.
Her party faced almost no effective rivals in the seats it contested, but it avoided fielding candidates in a few constituencies, an apparent effort to avoid the legislature being branded a one-party institution.
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), whose ranks had been decimated by mass arrests, had called a general strike and urged the public not to participate in what it called a “sham” election.
But Hasina, 76, called for citizens to cast their ballots and show their faith in the democratic process.
“The BNP is a terrorist organisation,” she told reporters after casting her vote.
“I am trying my best to ensure that democracy should continue in this country,” she added.
Initial signs suggested that turnout was low, despite widespread reports of carrot-and-stick inducements aimed at bolstering the poll’s legitimacy.
At noon, according to Election Commission Secretary Jahangir Alam, turnout stood at 18.5 percent.
Many said they had not voted because the outcome was assured.
“When one party is participating and another is not, why would I go to vote?” said Mohammad Saidur, 31, who pulls a rickshaw.
“We all know who’s going to win,” said Farhana Manik, 27, a student.
Charity worker Shahriar Ahmed, 32, called the election a “farce” and did not vote.
“I would rather stay home and watch movies,” Ahmed said.
BNP head Tarique Rahman, speaking from Britain where he lived in exile, said he worried about ballot stuffing.
“I fear that the election commission may increase voter turnout by using fake votes,” he told the Media.
Some voters said earlier they had been threatened with the confiscation of government benefit cards needed to access welfare payments if they refused to cast ballots for the ruling Awami League.
“They said since the government feeds us, we have to vote for them,” Lal Mia, 64, told the Media in the central district of Faridpur.
The BNP and other parties staged months of protests last year, demanding Hasina step down ahead of the vote.
Around 25,000 opposition cadres including the BNP’s entire local leadership were arrested in the ensuing crackdown.
Small and scattered protests continued in the days ahead of the election – a shadow of the hundreds of thousands seen at rallies a day earlier.
Chittagong Police said they had fired shotguns to break up a rally of up to 60 opposition members who had blocked a road using burning tyres, adding that no one was injured.
The election commission said nearly 700,000 police officers and reservists had been deployed to keep order during the vote along with nearly 100,000 members of the armed forces.
Politics in the world’s eighth-most populous country was long dominated by the rivalry between Hasina, the daughter of the country’s founding leader, and two-time premier Khaleda Zia, wife of a former military ruler.
Hasina had been the decisive victor since returning to power in a 2009 landslide, with two subsequent polls accompanied by widespread irregularities and accusations of rigging.
Khalida Zia, 78, was convicted of graft in 2018 with her son Tarique Rahman helming the BNP in her stead from London.
Rahman told the Media that his party, along with dozens of others, had refused to participate in a “sham election”.
Hasina had accused the BNP of arson and sabotage during protest campaign in the previous year, which was mostly peaceful but saw several people killed in police confrontations.
The government’s security forces have long been dogged by allegations of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances – charges it rejects.
The United States, the biggest export market for the South Asian nation of 170 million, had imposed sanctions on an elite police unit and its top commanders.
Economic headwinds have left many dissatisfied with Hasina’s government, after sharp spikes in food costs and months of chronic blackouts in 2022.
Wage stagnation in the garment sector, which accounts for around 85 percent of the country’s $55 billion in annual exports, sparked industrial unrest that saw some factories torched and hundreds more shuttered.
Pierre Prakash of the International Crisis Group said before the vote that Hasina’s government was clearly “less popular than it was a few years ago, yet Bangladeshis have little real outlet at the ballot box”.
Newspakistan.tv
