Bangladesh Votes; 2 Parties Claim Victory : Fraud, Violence Mark Election in Troubled South Asian Nation

After an election marred by widespread fraud, intimidation and violence, both major parties claimed victory Wednesday night in the third parliamentary vote in the troubled 15-year history of Bangladesh.

“We have won the mandate of the people,” said the leader of the opposition Awami League, Sheik Hasina Wazed.

Nonetheless, the government-backed Jatiya Party is expected to be given a majority of the 330 seats in the Parliament when the final results are announced today.

Hasina--daughter of Sheik Mujibur Rahman, the founder of Bangladesh who led this troubled South Asian nation to independence from Pakistan in 1971--charged that 25 of her party’s workers were killed and more than 500 injured in the election.

‘Not a Democracy’

Most Western analysts expected that the voting would be rigged to give President Hussain Mohammed Ershad’s Jatiya Party the two-thirds he needs to approve the edicts he issues under martial law. The Awami League was expected to get as many as 80 seats simply for taking part in the ballot, which other parties chose to boycott.

“This is not a democracy,” a Bangladeshi political writer said. “This is an understanding.”

Foreign diplomats who toured election areas Wednesday reported many instances of fraud and questioned the validity of the results announced by the government. Reporters saw election workers stuffing ballots into boxes at dozens of polling places.

In some areas, among them the jute-industry community of Narsinghdi, 40 miles north of the capital of Dhaka, violence erupted when armed party workers prevented supporters of rival parties from entering the polls.

Voter turnout in this first election since Ershad assumed power in a military coup in 1982 appeared to be low. A Western diplomat said, “In five hours of touring, I saw only one person actually voting.”

Efficient Turnout

Yet, government supervisors reported nearly total participation at many places. They showed reporters voter lists with entire pages of names checked off as having voted.

Most of the fraud appeared to have taken place at polling places controlled by the government-backed Jatiya Party. In Narsinghdi, troops of the Bangladesh Rifles watched idly as club-wielding Jatiya workers took up positions outside several polls and prevented Awami League voters from entering.

In other instances, reporters saw policemen and even soldiers push voters away from polling places, explaining that they were “maintaining order.”

At the end of the day, many of the voters who had been prevented from voting were marked as having voted. “We could not cast our votes, but our votes have been cast,” said Bimal Chandra Shaha, 36, an Awami League worker in Narsinghdi.

Everybody Cheats

Cheating was not limited to the government party. At the village of Bhairab Bazar, 48 miles northeast of Dhaka, where the voting was controlled by the Awami League, a woman named Afroza Sultana Lila, 22, arrived at her polling place only to find that her name had already been checked off.

The polling officer admitted later that her ballot had been cast by someone else, but he said it had probably been cast for the same candidate she would have chosen.

Hasina, the Awami League leader, denied that her party was involved in any fraud. “We were only trying to defend ourselves from attack,” she said.

She accused the Jatiya Party of thievery and hijacking. But she did not rule out the possibility of accepting the results if her party should win a substantial number of seats in Parliament. “We are still observing the situation,” she said.

Western diplomats consider her acceptance of the election results to be crucial to a gradual introduction of democratic institutions in this overpopulated and impoverished country. They admit the likelihood of fraud but contend that the election itself is a significant step.

U.S. Interests Seen

U.S. Ambassador Howard B. Schaffer said: “This is a country of 100 million people, and although it is considered a small country, it is the eighth most populous in the world. For Bangladesh to be moving to a political democracy is important for its own economic development and for the interests of the United States.”

Although the election was held under martial law, and several important opposition parties refused to take part in it, it was encouraged by virtually all the foreign embassies here, some of which have large aid programs. The United States contributed $161 million in the last fiscal year.

“The rules here are different,” a Western diplomat said Wednesday. “When you talk about human rights here, you have to talk first about the right to live. The right to vote is very far away when you consider this.”

Ershad, Bangladesh’s president, said the elections mean that a “meaningful democratic order will be established in the country.”