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Dhaka: Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has won re-election for a fifth term Sunday, officials said, following a boycott led by an opposition party she branded a “terrorist organisation”.
Hasina’s ruling Awami League “has won more than 50 percent seats,” an Election Commission spokesman told AFP, with counting ongoing.
She 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, an apparent effort to avoid the legislature being branded a one-party institution.
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), whose ranks have been decimated by mass arrests, called a general strike and, along with dozens of others, refused to participate in a “sham election”.
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