|
 With fewer than half of the 300 seats being contested, voters in
modest numbers cast ballots on Sunday amid heavy security in polling
that lacked the festivity typical of Bangladeshi elections and was
shunned by international observers as flawed.
Low voter participation could pile new pressure on Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina to find a compromise with the opposition Bangladesh
Nationalist Party (BNP) for holding new elections.
Either Hasina or BNP chief Begum Khaleda Zia has been prime minister
for all but two of the past 22 years. The two are bitter rivals.
The Awami League won 105 of the contested seats, on top of the 127
seats where it ran unopposed, giving it a more-than two-thirds
majority. Hasina is expected to form a new government this month.
"The immediate fallout of this dismal voter turnout will be the
Hasina government coming under greater pressure to hold talks with
the opposition," said Hossain Zillur Rahman, an economist and
adviser to a former "caretaker" government tasked with overseeing an
election.
"It is the ultimate sign of protest by Bangladeshi people and tells
us that they are unhappy with the way elections have been held in
this country."
The impasse between the two main parties, which showed no sign of
easing, undermined the poll's legitimacy and is fuelling worries of
economic stagnation and further violence in the impoverished South
Asian nation of 160 million.
"This is a suicidal election as it will not bring any peace in the
country," Abul Kashem, who works as a driver and is a supporter of
the BNP, said outside a Dhaka polling station.
The country's $22 billion garment industry, which accounts for 80
percent of exports, has been disrupted by transportation blockades
ahead of the election. BNP officials said party supporters would
maintain the blockade and called another in a series of general
strikes starting Monday morning.
Eighteen people were killed in separate incidents on election day,
according to media reports, and voting was halted at about 400
polling stations. More than 100 people were killed in the run-up to
the ballot, mostly in rural areas, and fears of violence kept many
voters away.
Police said they had been forced to fire on opposition activists in
six incidents.
Apart from a handful of crude bomb explosions, Dhaka was calm. In
Satkania, near the port city of Chittagong, a poll official's arms
were broken and police were attacked.
FUTURE ELECTION?
Hasina has spoken of holding talks with the opposition on the
conduct of future elections which, if successful, could lead to
another poll. The BNP had demanded a halt to the current electoral
process.
[to top of second column] |
Turnout figures were not yet available, though election officials
acknowledged that they had anticipated low numbers and voting
appeared slow at Dhaka polling stations.
At one, in the Lalbagh area, 626 of 2,274 voters, or 28 percent,
cast ballots. At another nearby site, final turnout among male
voters was 21 percent.
The BNP said low turnout vindicated its denunciation of the poll as
a farce.
"The turnout is a clear indication that the common people rejected
this election and it is almost an election without voters," Shamsher
Mobin Chowdhury, a BNP vice chairman, told Reuters on Sunday.
Junior Law Minister Mohammad Quamrul Islam said the election was
necessary for the democratic process and repeated that another poll
could be held anytime in agreement with the BNP.
"But they must stop violence before dialogue for the next elections
could start," he told reporters after voting.
The BNP denounces Hasina's scrapping of the practice of having a
caretaker government oversee elections. The Awami League says the
interim government system has proved a failure.
Many BNP leaders are in jail or in hiding, and Khaleda says she is
under virtual house arrest, which the government denies.
The European Union, a duty free market for nearly 60 percent of
Bangladesh's garment exports, refused to send election observers, as
did the United States and the Commonwealth, a grouping of 53 mainly
former British colonies.
"The elections have to happen to ensure a government is formed and
the country can start functioning again normally," said Mehedi
Rahman, 43, a schoolteacher voting in Dhaka.
"The unfortunate part is there is hardly any meaning because the
opposition has boycotted it and the outcome is known."
(Additional reporting by Nandita Bose and Serajul Quadir and Reuters
Television; editing by Ron Popeski and Michael Perry)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
