Bangladesh election officials are counting votes after a controversial poll, fraught with violence and boycotted by the opposition, is guaranteed to give a fourth straight term to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
Bangladeshis largely stayed away from the vote on Sunday as initial signs suggested a low turnout, despite widespread reports of carrot-and-stick inducements aimed at bolstering the poll’s legitimacy.
Awami League (AL) President and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina cast her vote at the Dhaka City College centre here this morning in the 12th Jatiya Sangsad election.“Vote counting has begun,” said election commission spokesman Shariful Alam. Results are expected as early as Monday morning.
Turnout was 27.15 percent at 3pm (09:00 GMT), an hour before polls closed, the election commission said, compared with an overall turnout of more than 80 percent in the last election in 2018.
Voting was cancelled at three centers' due to irregularities, said Jahangir Alam, secretary of the commission. Independent election observer and civil society activist Badul Alam Majumder told he did not consider the vote a “proper election at all”.
“It has a seriously low turnout – probably the lowest I have seen in my life,” he said, adding that his organisation did not officially monitor the vote this year.
Hasina, 76, urged citizens to cast their ballots and show their faith in the democratic process, branding the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) a “terrorist organisation”.
Accompanied by her daughter and other family members, Hasina voted at capital Dhaka’s City College minutes after polling began.
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