Dhaka, Jan 8 (EFE).- Current prime minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina, has won a fourth straight term in the recent general elections, marked by opposition boycott and low turnout, according to the preliminary results.
Hasina’s Awami League won 167 of the 299 seats up for grabs, according to the Election Commission.
Hasina is now set to win a fourth consecutive term as Prime Minister of Bangladesh, and fifth overall, taking into her first tenure as head of the government between 1996 and 2001.
Some 1,900 candidates from 28 political parties, most of them belonging to or ed by the Awami League, contested 299 of the 300 parliamentary seats on Sunday after the authorities suspended voting in one constituency following the death of a candidate.
The incumbent prime minister urged her ers not to celebrate their electoral victory on the streets, according to statements by Awami League party official Sayem Khan.
The elections witnessed a 40 percent turnout, according to Electoral Commission chief Haibul Awal, compared to the 80.2 percent in the 2018 elections.
The main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), congratulated the people for showing no confidence in Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government by responding to its call for boycotting the election and vowed to continue protests.
“The government spent millions of taka and threatened people with the suspension of their social benefits, yet they could not bring the voters to the centers,” BNP spokesperson and senior t secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi told EFE.
“As the details started to emerge from different areas, we could see it was a microcosmic presence of voters,” Rizvi said, calling the election commission’s data about voter turnout a “complete lie” and claiming the actual turnout to be much lower.
At least one person was killed and scores others were injured as voting ended amid spreading incidents of clashes and allegations of irregularities.
The Election Commission said 15 people were punished for casting fake votes, while 42 people were arrested for their involvement in different irregularities.
The candidature of a ruling Awami League member was also cancelled at the last minute for an electoral code violation.
The opposition BNP and its allies boycotted the election over Hasina’s refusal to dissolve her government and appoint an interim istration to oversee the polls. EFE
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