Violence Mars Bangladesh Polls

Following weeks of unrest, Bangladeshis went to polling stations for general elections on Sunday, January 5, amid heavy security following the arson of at least 120 polling stations across the impoverished country.

“I don’t really want to vote as I don’t think it’s a proper election with only the ruling party candidates participating,” Anwar Hossain told Agence France Presse (AFP) outside a polling station in Dhaka’s Azimpur neighborhood.
“But I am scared about what might happen if I don’t as the candidates might think I am anti-Awami League.”
Polling stations for the general elections opened on Sunday morning amid wide opposition boycott.
Ahead of Sunday’s vote, six people were killed as police said more than 200 polling stations had been attacked since late Saturday into early Sunday, and officers guarding the booths were also targeted.
With the fear of attacks limiting turnout and around 150 people killed in the build-up to voting, tens of thousands of troops were deployed across the country.
“We’ve seen thousands of protestors attack polling booths and our personnel at a number of locations with Molotov cocktails and petrol bombs,” Bogra’s police chief Syed Abu Sayem told AFP.
“The situation is extremely volatile.”
There were similar reports in the northern Rangpur region, where police said they had shot one person dead as protesters snatched stacks of ballot papers.
Two other opposition activists were shot dead by police in similar incidents elsewhere in the north, and a fourth in the coastal Feni district.
A polling officer who was beaten up by a group of opposition supporters died of his injuries, as did a truck driver whose vehicle had been firebombed.
Officials from the US, the UN and elsewhere tried and failed to broker an agreement so that an election could be held with the agreement of both sides.
Months of conflict have damaged the country’s reputation as a south Asian democracy and severely disrupted the economy.

Farce
The opposition has dismissed as farcical the election called by Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister and leader of the governing Awami League.
“No one at home and abroad will legitimize this farce of an election,” Khaleda Zia, leader of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist party, said in a statement in the capital Dhaka, where her supporters say she is effectively under house arrest, Financial Times reported.
“The Awami League will emerge from its veneer of legality to its illegal self.”
The elections were called by Sheikha Hasina following weeks of rallies and street protests called by the BNP which called for a neutral caretaker administration to manage the elections..
The call, however, was widely rejected by opposition who called for boycotting the elections, leaving 153 parliamentary seats, out of the 300, uncontested and will be won by the Awami League and its allies.
The government insisted it was constitutionally obliged to hold the election this month, but acknowledged that it would not have a full mandate and would need to hold another election, provided it could reach agreement with the BNP.
“Without a major party participating… the mandate that this election will render is of a limited value,” said Gowher Rizvi, an adviser to Ms Hasina.
“The dialogue is still open.”
“What has happened in the past six months is a particular tragedy, a tragedy of the worst type,” he said.
“Once again our reputation is of an unstable democracy, and to that extent we are very, very concerned. But we are also confident that the problem can be resolved.”
Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch, the New York-based group, urged the government to end its crackdown on the opposition, including arbitrary arrests, and called on the opposition in turn to stop violence by its supporters.
“The international community should remind Bangladesh that the world is watching and that the deteriorating rights climate cannot continue,” said Brad Adams, the group’s Asia director.

Source: OnIslam