DHAKA, Bangladesh: When the founding leader of Bangladesh, father of current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was assassinated in 1975 after helping achieve independence from Pakistan, then-Foreign Minister Kamal Hossain abandoned a state visit in Europe to rush to her side.
Now Hossain, 82, is helming a popular opposition against Hasina that aims to prevent his former Awami League party from maintaining its hold on Bangladesh in Sunday’s parliamentary elections.
“There should be a very decisive victory for the opposition if it’s free and fair,” Hossain said in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press. “If there is some kind of a decision in favor of the present government, I can assure you that it will not be a free and fair election.”
A respected Oxford-educated lawyer, Hossain emerged as an improbable opposition leader after a court disqualified Hasina’s chief rival, former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, because she is serving a 17-year sentence for corruption.
Although Zia is in solitary confinement in a colonial-era jail, she is not alone: More than 15,000 opposition party activists and critics have been arrested since November, the vice chairman of Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party said Saturday. At least nine people have been killed in campaign-related skirmishes, the party said.
“The urge for power can make someone who’s human into something less than human,” Hossain said of Hasina.
Hossain supported Hasina as part of a grand coalition in 2008 elections, when the Awami League and its allies secured 270 of the 300 seats in Bangladesh’s Parliament.
But in 2014, Zia and the BNP boycotted the polls, leaving more than half of the parliamentary seats uncontested. Voter turnout in the country of 160 million was a dismal 22 percent, and the Awami League’s landslide victory was met with violent protests that left at least 22 people dead.
Hossain is among those who see that election as illegitimate. He said the government since then has been characterized by “unprecedented corruption” and “political patronage of the crudest kind.” He said Hasina — the daughter of a revolutionary fighter and his former benefactor — has shown increasing authoritarian tendencies.
The ruling party has challenged that narrative by focusing on Bangladesh’s plaudits by the World Bank and others as a development success story. Its economy grew nearly 8 percent this year on greater agricultural production and the South Asian country’s booming garments exports industry, the second-largest in the world after China.
The Awami League says its supporters also have been targeted during the run-up to the vote, alleging in a statement Saturday that opposition activists had killed six of their party leaders and injured hundreds more in bomb and arson attacks.
Hasina implored her supporters to stay at polling stations Sunday until the votes had been counted.
“I am alerting all, don’t get confused even if the BNP announces that they are boycotting the election,” Hasina said while visiting a party leader injured in campaign violence at a military-run hospital in Dhaka.
“I want to say, maybe the BNP would say at one point of the election that they are withdrawing from the race, we will not compete. Don’t trust them. It could be a ploy,” she said.
Hossain, too, said he is telling his supporters to stay at voting centers — even at the risk of violence.
“We are saying very strongly ... whatever we do, let us stick it out, however ugly,” he said.
Bangladesh opposition leader expects victory if vote is fair
Bangladesh opposition leader expects victory if vote is fair
- Hossain supported Hasina as part of a grand coalition in 2008 elections, when the Awami League and its allies secured 270 of the 300 seats in Bangladesh’s Parliament
Related
Dignified transfer for Kentucky soldier who was the 7th US service member to die in Iran war
- Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Kentucky died Sunday
ELIZABETHTOWN, USA: Vice President JD Vance joined the grieving family of a Kentucky man who was the seventh US service member to die in combat during the Iran war as his remains were brought back to the US Monday evening.
The dignified transfer, a solemn event that honors US service members killed in action, took place at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Kentucky. He died Sunday after being wounded during a March 1 attack on the Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Arabia, a Pentagon statement said.
Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saluted alongside high ranking military officials as the transfer case draped with the American flag was carried from the military aircraft and into an awaiting vehicle.
Mike Bell, retired pastor of Glendale Christian Church, said he’d known Pennington since he was a toddler and got a call from Pennington’s father when the soldier was hurt.
“I talked to Tim Saturday morning, and he was doing a little better, and they were talking about maybe moving him to Germany,” Bell said. Tim Pennington called again that evening, Bell said, to ask for prayers as his son’s condition was worsening, and then later told him the soldier had succumbed to his injuries.
“He was just a quiet person,” said Bell, noting that Pennington attended the church’s after-school program. “I mean, he never attracted attention because he was just steady doing what he needed to do to do it.”
State and local officials grieve
Pennington was assigned to the 1st Space Battalion, 1st Space Brigade of the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command based at Fort Carson, Colorado.
The unit’s mission focused on “missile warning, GPS, and long-haul satellite communications,” according to their website.
“This just breaks my heart,” Keith Taul, judge-executive of Hardin County, where Pennington was from, said in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. “I have known the family for at least 30 years. I can’t imagine the pain and suffering they are experiencing.”
Glendale is an unincorporated town of about 300 residents south of the Hardin County seat of Elizabethtown.
In a statement posted on social media, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear called Pennington “a hero who sacrificed everything serving our country.”
Six other soldiers killed
The other six service members killed since the conflict began on Feb. 28 were Army reservists killed in Kuwait when an Iranian drone struck an operations center at a civilian port.
President Donald Trump on Saturday joined grieving families at Dover Air Force Base at the dignified transfer for those six US soldiers.
The dignified transfer is considered one of the most somber duties of any commander in chief. During his first term, Trump said bearing witness to the transfer was “the toughest thing I have to do” as president.
‘An American hero’
Pennington graduated in 2017 from Central Hardin High School, where he was enrolled in the automotive technology pathway, district spokesman John Wright told the AP. Former automotive tech instructor Tom Pitt, who taught Pennington in 2017 at Hardin County Early College and Career Center, called him “an American hero.”
“A lot of times as a teacher, you have students who are smart, you have students who are charismatic, who are likable, dare I say, enchanting,” said Pitt, who called Pennington Nate. “Rarely do you have students who are all of those. And Ben Pennington was all of those. He was basically the quintessential all-American.”
Photos on his and family members’ Facebook pages show that Pennington achieved the rank of Eagle Scout in August 2017. His Eagle project was the demolition of some old baseball dugouts in Glendale, said Darin Life, former committee chairman for Troop 221.
“If you look up Eagle Scout, his picture’s probably there,” said Life, who knew Pennington throughout his scouting career. “He loved his country. I would have expected nothing less of him than to lose his life protecting his country.”
Awards and decorations
A month after his Eagle ceremony, Pennington posted a photo of himself taking the oath of enlistment. He entered the service as a unit supply specialist and was assigned to the Space and Missile Command on June 10, 2025, the Army said in a release.
Among his awards and decorations were the Army Commendation Medal, Army Achievement Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.
“The US Army Space and Missile Defense Command is deeply saddened by the loss of Sgt. Pennington,” said Lt. Gen. Sean A. Gainey, USASMDC commanding general. “He gave the ultimate sacrifice for the country he loved.”
Col. Michael F. Dyer, 1st Space Brigade commander, described Pennington as “a dedicated and experienced noncommissioned officer who led with strength, professionalism and sense of duty.”
Pennington will be posthumously promoted to staff sergeant, the Pentagon said.
