Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has secured her fifth term in office following a general election that saw the main opposition party boycott the polls. With two decades in power, Hasina is now the country’s longest-serving premier.
Initial reports indicate that her Awami League party has won 172 out of 225 parliamentary seats, with the final tally for all 300 seats expected on Monday.
The opposition party, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), decided to boycott the election after numerous arrests of its members in the lead-up to the vote. As a result, the remaining seats were divided among minor parties and independent candidates.
The BNP has accused Hasina of manipulating previous elections and using law enforcement against political opponents, leading to the US imposing sanctions on a Bangladeshi police unit in 2021 for alleged extrajudicial killings.
Hasina, the longest-serving prime minister of Bangladesh, is 76 years old and the daughter of the country’s first post-colonial leader. She gained prominence as a prominent figure opposing the military junta that ruled the nation in the 1980s.
Hasina served as prime minister from 1996 to 2001 and then again from 2009 onwards. She has been praised for her efforts in improving the pay and working conditions of the millions of people employed in Bangladesh’s garment industry, which is one of the largest in the world. However, the country’s economy has faced challenges in recent years due to stagnant wages and increasing food and fuel costs, leading to Hasina’s government accepting a $4.7 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund last year. In a separate development, there were 18 arson attacks reported over the course of Friday and Saturday, with ten polling stations being targeted.
Tragically, one incident resulted in the death of four individuals, including a child, when a passenger train bound for the capital, Dhaka, was set on fire. The police have attributed the attack to the BNP and have arrested seven members of the party, although the party denies any involvement in the incident.
