All Bangladesh Election Lacks Is a Real Choice and Voters

This politically gridlocked country held an election Thursday, and there were killings, acts of intimidation by the opposition, reports of government ballot-box stuffing and soldiers and police deployed by the hundreds of thousands to keep the peace.

Only two things were missing as one of Asia’s most impoverished countries selected a new Parliament: a real choice for the electorate, and voters themselves.

In one Dhaka constituency, 13 out of 3,000 eligible adults cast ballots by noon, one polling official said. At another station a stone’s throw from the Parliament, 170 of 3,772 voters cast ballots by midday.

Meaningful official returns were unavailable before today. But the Fair Election Monitoring Alliance, or FEMA, a coalition of 130 nongovernmental organizations, estimated turnout at 15%. The group found the election neither “free” nor “fair” and blamed the government and the opposition, which had called a boycott.

After polls closed, fiery opposition leader Sheik Hasina Wajed asserted that outgoing Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and her Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which was assured formal victory because of the mainstream opposition’s refusal to field a rival slate, was able to coax less than 5% of the electorate to the ballot box.

“The BNP government no longer exists on the soil of Bangladesh after this verdict of the people,” Wajed said.

Sowing the seeds of further conflict, Wajed called on the armed forces and civil servants to take orders only from the country’s president, Abdur Rahman Biswas. She also asked that Biswas ignore Zia and form a caretaker government headed by a Supreme Court judge or other trusted figure so new elections can be held within 90 days.

In a 22-month-old feud that has hobbled public life in Bangladesh, Wajed’s Awami League and two other opposition parties have refused to take part in any polls administered by Zia’s government, charging that she would resort to fraud and terrorism to keep power.

On election day, government officials and news reports said as many as 14 people were killed in voting-related clashes. In more than 300 locales across this river-laced country, polling stations were attacked and ballot boxes snatched, Chief Election Commissioner A. K. M. Sadeque said.

M. H. Khan Monju, a candidate of the ruling BNP, was arrested, reportedly in possession of two sacks filled with ballot papers, a rifle, ammunition and explosives. In Rangpur, 160 miles northwest of Dhaka, 160 polling centers were shut because of violence.

In the southern port of Chittagong, where two people died in cross-fire after election supporters clashed with opposition militants, bomb attacks prevented Fisheries and Livestock Minister Abdullah Al-Noman from voting.

FEMA reported that 30 ballot boxes were stolen in Tangail, polling was canceled in 10 constituencies in Gopalganj because no voting materials were present, and election officials were stripped naked in Barguna.

Such irregularities were common enough, if not the rule. In Dhaka, lines of supposed voters, some only in their mid-teens, were hurriedly assembled when foreign correspondents visited some polling stations to gauge the turnout.

Mozammel Haque Shikdel, in charge of the polling station at Dhanmondi Government Boys High School in the capital, accused the BNP of forcing people to show up.

“The voters who are coming are coming under pressure,” he said.

However, even though reports from outlying districts were slow to arrive in the capital, it appeared that bloodshed on a major scale was averted. In Dhaka, where soldiers were stationed with heavy machine guns at sandbagged control points and patrolled in trucks and four-wheel-drive vehicles, there was no full-scale effort by the opposition to sabotage voting, though a 48-hour protest strike cleared streets of all but the rare bicycle rickshaw.