Bangladesh PM wins fifth term

Bangladesh's Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has won a fifth term in power with her party taking three-quarters of seats in parliament, election officials said Monday after polls boycotted by the opposition as a "sham."

"The Awami League has won the election," Moniruzzaman Talukder, a joint secretary of the Election Commission, said a day after a vote boycotted by the opposition, with initial reports suggesting a meager turnout of some 40 percent.

Talukder said Hasina's party had won 223 seats, but support of other lawmakers including from allied parties, means Hasina's actual control over the 300 seat parliament is even higher, analysts said.

"This is a one-party parliament," Ali Riaz of Illinois State University told Agence France-Presse, adding that "only the allies of the Awami League had the opportunity to participate."

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, in an apparent effort to avoid the legislature being branded a one-party institution.

The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, whose ranks have been decimated by mass arrests, called a general strike and, along with dozens of others, refused to participate in the election.

Hasina, 76, who had called for citizens to show faith in the democratic process, branded the BNP "a terrorist organization" after she voted on Sunday.                                          

WITH AFP