Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina scores big election win, opposition claims vote rigged

DHAKA - Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has secured a fourth term with a landslide victory in polls the opposition rejected as rigged, amid clashes between rival supporters that killed at least 17 people.

Hasina's ruling Awami League party and its allies won 288 seats in the 300-seat parliament, with the main opposition securing only six seats, Election Commission secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed said.

The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), which boycotted the last poll in 2014, won just six seats.

Hasina's win consolidated her decade-long rule over Bangladesh, where she is credited with improving the economy and promoting development but has also been accused of rampant human rights abuses, a crackdown on the media and suppressing dissent. She denies such charges.

Raising minimum wages for workers in Bangladesh's massive garments industry, the world's second biggest after China, could be one of her first tasks after she takes office, party leaders have said. Hasina will meet foreign journalists and poll observers at her official residence later on Monday.

Opposition leader Kamal Hossain said their alliance, the National Unity Front led by the BNP, had called on the Election Commission to order a fresh vote under a neutral administration"as soon as possible", alleging Sunday's poll was flawed.

At least 17 were people were killed as the vote took place, police said, after a violent campaign season during which the opposition alleged the government denied it a level playing field.

"The whole election was completely manipulated. It should be cancelled," 82-year-old Hossain said at his residence in the capital, Dhaka, late on Sunday. Candidates reported witnessing ballot-stuffing and vote-rigging by ruling party activists, who also barred opposition polling agents from voting centres, Hossain said.

"We've had bad elections in the past but I must say that it is unprecedented how bad this particular election was. The minimum requirements of free and fair election are absent," he said.

Hossain said he would meet opposition alliance members on Monday to decide their next step.

Hasina's son, Sajeeb Wazed, called the opposition "sore losers making false allegations".

RIGGING INVESTIGATION

The Election Commission said it was investigating allegations of vote rigging from across the Muslim-majority country of 165 million people. A spokesman declined to say if those probes would affect the election result.

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said on Twitter: "With serious allegations of voter intimidation, restrictions on opposition polling agents and several candidates seeking a re-poll, there are concerns about the credibility of the Bangladesh elections."

Hundreds of opposition workers were arrested in the months before the election on charges that the opposition said were"fictitious", and many said they were attacked by ruling party activists, crippling their ability to campaign.

Hasina's government has denied the accusations and her party says many of its own workers were hurt in attacks by the opposition. Seven ruling party workers and five BNP workers were killed and 20 wounded on election day, police said.

Reuters reporters across Bangladesh witnessed sparse attendance at polling booths and some voters alleged ruling party workers had blocked them from entering booths, saying their ballots had already been cast. Campaign posters of the ruling party dominated streets in many parts of Dhaka.

The Election Commission said it would declare voter turnout figures late on Monday.

This was the first election in which the BNP campaigned without its leader Khaleda Zia - Hasina's arch rival. The two women have alternated in power for most of the past three decades but Khaleda has been in jail since February on corruption charges that she says are politically motivated.

The Election Commission said it would hold a fresh vote for one seat where the poll was marred by violence. Another constituency, where a candidate died days before the election, will also go to the polls in the next few days.

LIFT GROWTH, WAGES

Hasina's son Wazed told Reuters on the eve of the election the next government would try to lift Bangladesh's growth rate to 10 per cent, from 7.8 per cent in the 2017/18 financial year.

He also said minimum wages for workers in the garments industry, which at sales of more than US$30.6 billion (S$41.8 billion) generates around 83 per cent of Bangladesh's total exports, would be raised.

"Can't say if it will be done immediately but it will be raised without a doubt," he said days after protests demanding higher wages.

The government, however, does not want to "stay stuck on the garments sector" but diversify into phone and other electronics manufacturing, he said.

China and India, Bangladesh's western neighbour that helped it win independence from Pakistan in 1971, are its top two investors.

"We are open to investment from anyone and everyone. It's just that the Chinese have been very proactive about investments," Wazed said.

"The West and others should try to compete with them."