Ershad Leads 11 Rivals by Wide Margin in Bangladesh Election

President Hussain Mohammed Ershad led 11 obscure opponents by a huge margin Wednesday in a presidential election boycotted by the major opposition parties.

Incomplete returns showed Ershad leading all other candidates, including a retired army colonel who was behind the assassination of a previous president, by a margin of nearly 9 to 1.

A general strike called by opposition leaders virtually immobilized Dhaka, the capital, and other urban centers in this impoverished country. Only a small percentage of the 47 million eligible voters turned out.

Reporters saw instances of massive fraud, including the stuffing of ballot boxes, at polling places in Dhaka and rural areas nearby.

Sheik Hasina Wazed, leader of the opposition People’s League, which had called for the boycott, said: “In the name of election, the military dictatorship has committed a sheer mockery on the people of Bangladesh. It was nothing but a farce.”

She called on her followers to make today a day of protest against the election.

Members of Ershad’s Jatiya (National Volunteers) Party defended the election as a necessary step toward the restoration of democratic rule. Ershad, who took power in a military coup in 1982, promised to lift martial law after his election to a five-year term if Parliament passes an “indemnity bill” endorsing all the acts of his four-year rule under martial law.

Western diplomats criticized Ershad for allowing massive vote fraud and corruption, but they defended the election as a step forward for Bangladesh, the world’s eighth most populous country--100 million people crammed into an area the size of Wisconsin.

Unimportant Opponents

“The election was Ershad against 11 people who are not important,” one diplomat said. “But it paves the way for the lifting of martial law and restoration of constitutional government.”

According to election officials, the only two candidates besides Ershad who received more than a token vote were Moulana Hafezji Huzoor, a religious leader, and Sayed Farooq Rahman, a retired army lieutenant colonel who directed the 1975 assassination of the founder of Bangladesh, Sheik Mujibur Rahman, and members of his family.

Farooq and other officers who took part in the assassination were exiled by a subsequent government. Farooq said he has spent most of the last nine years in Libya and Southern California, where he said he trained as a helicopter pilot.

Under Ershad, Farooq was allowed to return to Bangladesh and become a candidate for president. Opponents charge that the Farooq candidacy was an attempt to embarrass Hasina Wazed, the People’s League leader, who is one of the two children of Sheik Mujibur Rahman who survived the assassination.

Bloodstains Remain

Hasina Wazed, who is known as Sheik Hasina, calls Farooq “the killer of my father and the father of our nation.” Her press conferences are often held in what used to be the family home, where the killings took place and the bloodstains can still be seen.

Farooq, a former tank commander in the Bengal Lancers, said he ran for president because of a “vacuum of leadership in the country.”

“If something unforeseen happens,” Farooq said, “I will have established that I can be the next president.”

It is because of the “unforeseen” element of Bangladesh politics--the cycle of assassinations, coups and military governments--that Ershad said he undertook the effort to install a stable democratic government.

According to sources in his government, he plans to convene the Parliament within the next two weeks and ask it to approve an indemnity bill endorsing his decisions of the past four years. His party does not have the two-thirds majority needed to pass the bill--it has 210 of the 330 seats--but it expects to get the support of several smaller parties.