Sheikh Hasina has secured her fifth term as Bangladeshi prime minister in an election whose outcome was decided the moment its schedule was announced in early November when the main opposition boycotted the poll.
The surprise was who came second.
Instead of any political party, independent candidates secured a total of 63 seats, the second highest after Hasina’s Awami League (AL), which won 222, creating a problem of finding a parliamentary opposition.
The current opposition, the Jatiya Party, managed to secure just 11 of the 300 parliamentary seats, according to the Elections Commission.
Almost all the winning independent contenders were people who had been rejected by the AL but were asked by the party leadership to stand as “dummy candidates” to give the election a competitive veneer in front of the world. “This is a bizarre outcome of a bizarre election,” Shahidul Alam, a renowned Bangladeshi rights activist and photographer, told Al Jazeera. “Dummy candidates in a dummy election will now lead to a dummy parliament.”
Shunned by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) – the AL’s main political opponent – which wanted the balloting held under a neutral entity instead of Hasina’s administration, Sunday’s “one-sided election” was just a “mere formality” to put Hasina back in power again, analysts say.
The only suspense, they added, was voter turnout, after Western governments put pressure on Hasina’s government to ensure a free, fair and participatory poll.
After polling closed at 4pm (10:00 GMT on Sunday), the Election Commission (EC) said turnout was 40 percent.
But many were doubtful it was even that high.
The turnout figure, which was shown on the dashboard at the EC headquarters hours after the briefing, was 28 percent, and a photo of it was widely circulated in the country’s social media and received criticism. Al Jazeera checked and verified that figure.
BNP leaders, meanwhile, termed even 28 percent very high, saying that most of the polling booths across the country had been empty throughout the day. The opposition party earlier declared a 48-hour “hartal”, equivalent to a total strike, from Saturday morning, which it believed also reduced turnout.
