Bangladesh heads into election as opposition boycotts polls 

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s ruling party held a campaign rally in Dhaka on Monday, ahead of general elections scheduled on Jan. 7 that the country’s main opposition party is boycotting.

The nation of nearly 170 million people will vote this coming Sunday in an election that many expect will give the ruling Awami League its fourth straight parliamentary term and a resounding victory for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who has been in power since 2009.

The country’s main opposition parties are boycotting the upcoming election as Hasina rejected demands to step down and allow the polls to be held under a neutral interim government. The candidates on Sunday’s ballot will all be from the Awami League, its allies or independents.

“There’s no need for us to engage in vote theft,” Hasina said during an election rally in Dhaka. “With the ongoing democracy in the country, public service has increased, and we secure votes by genuinely connecting with people.”

In the last few months, tens of thousands of people have turned out for various protests calling for Hasina to resign ahead of the elections. Many leaders of Bangladesh’s main opposition parties and its supporters are currently jailed.

The biggest of these opposition parties, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, said they have no faith that the Awami League will hold a free and fair election.

“Democracy is dead in Bangladesh,” BNP International Affairs Secretary Muhammad Nawshad Zamir told Arab News. “This is in fact a dummy election at best.

“The civil administration, police administration, the judiciary, the election commission, and all other institutions that ensure democracy have been monopolized by the Bangladesh Awami League. There cannot be any free, fair and neutral elections in Bangladesh under the present setup.”

Under Hasina, Bangladesh has become one of the fastest-growing economies in the region from once being one of the world’s poorest. Poverty declined from 11.8 percent in 2010 to 5 percent in 2022, according to the World Bank.

She achieved political stability, managed to maintain economic stability, increased Bangladesh’s international standing, while also bringing in major infrastructure developments, including Dhaka’s metro rail and the $3.6 billion Padma Bridge, the country’s largest infrastructure project in its history that is expected to increase GDP by 1.3 percent.

But the growth appears to come at the cost of Bangladesh’s democracy, said Dr. ASM Amanulla, a sociology professor at Dhaka University.

“There is no democracy and democratic practice in Bangladesh,” Amanulla told Arab News. “Virtually, there is no civil society in the country … and in the truest sense, there are no democratic political parties.”

Hasina “turned into an authoritarian leader” because of local politics, economics and geopolitics, he said, adding that pressure had come from China, Russia, and India, but also from ensuring the continuation of the development she brought into the country.

“We don’t need to wait until Jan. 7 to see the results of the election, the people of this country are not waiting to see the results,” he said.

“Election means uncertainty in the results. Who will win, nobody knows. But there is no uncertainty of the result in Bangladesh. Throughout the country there is a certainty among the voters that the ruling Awami League is coming to power. The voting culture of South Asia is lost here. There is no election festivity in the whole country.”