DHAKA: Seventeen people were killed during sporadic clashes throughout the country as millions headed to the polls during Bangladesh’s election day on Sunday. A total of 47 opposition candidates, including two independent candidates, boycotted the election, claiming irregularities in the voting process.
More than 104 million people took to the polls on Sunday across almost 300 constituencies to elect representatives from among 1,860 candidates.
Although 39 political parties took part in the voting process, the election battle was down to the ruling Awami League (AL)-led Moha Jot and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led Jatiya Oikya Front (JOF). Among the contenders, 272 were backed by AL, while 282 were nominated by BNP. Seven of Sunday’s clash victims were AL supporters, while three AL supporters were also killed the day before. At least 64 people were injured in 22 incidents of violence across 12 districts during voting hours, according to local media reports. The Election Commission (EC) suspended voting in 22 polling centers due to the chaos at the centers.
EC Secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed said: “Legal action will be taken following investigation into election violence.” The country’s main opposition party, BNP, has claimed that their candidates and polling agents have faced harassment, and in some cases, physical assault, in 250 constituencies.
The party has submitted an official complaint to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), regarding the alleged irregularities on Sunday afternoon.
“Polling agents have been kicked out in 221 constituencies,” said BNP Joint Secretary-General Moazzem Hossain Alal. “We have already said before that there can’t be a fair and free election under a partisan government.” In the letter signed by parliamentary committee member Nazrul Islam Khan, BNP alleges that ballots were wrongly marked in more than 150 constituencies. It also said that the voters were intimidated into choosing sides and that many polling agents from the opposition were arrested.
Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, secretary-general of the BNP said: “This election was turned into a mockery. Our democracy has been severely damaged.”
However, he said that the BNP and JOF would hold a press conference on Monday to say more on the general election.
“What a shame it is that we have to discuss election fairness 47 years after liberation,” said JOF chief Dr. Kamal Hossain, who called it a “massively unfair election.”
However, the ruling AL party still claims that the election took place in a “peaceful and neutral” environment. AL Secretary-General Abdur Rahman claimed that BNP supporters targeted AL supporters in different parts of the country during the election and claimed AL would accept all final results. Mobile service providers resumed 3G and 4G services two hours after voting ended. The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission on Saturday suspended mobile data services in an attempt to quell fake content circulating on social media.
17 killed in Bangladesh election day violence
17 killed in Bangladesh election day violence
- The country’s main opposition party, BNP, has claimed that their candidates and polling agents have faced harassment, and in some cases, physical assault, in 250 constituencies
After nearly 7 weeks and many rumors, Bolivia’s ex-leader reappears in his stronghold
- Morales was Bolivia’s first Indigenous president who served from 2006 until his fraught 2019 ouster and subsequent self-exile
- He dismissed rumors fueled by local politicians and fanned by social media that he would try to flee the country
LA PAZ: Bolivia’s long-serving socialist former leader, Evo Morales, reappeared Thursday in his political stronghold of the tropics after almost seven weeks of unexplained absence, endorsing candidates for upcoming regional elections and quieting rumors he had fled the country in the wake of the US seizure of his ally, Venezuela’s ex-President Nicolás Maduro.
The weeks of hand-wringing over Morales’ fate showed how little the Andean country knows about what’s happening in the remote Chapare region, where the former president has spent the past year evading an arrest warrant on human trafficking charges, and how vulnerable it is to fears about US President Donald Trump’s potential future foreign escapades.
The media outlet of Morales’ coca-growing union, Radio Kawsachun Coca, released footage of Morales smiling in dark sunglasses as he arrived via tractor at a stadium in the central Bolivian town of Chimoré to address his supporters.
Morales, Bolivia’s first Indigenous president who served from 2006 until his fraught 2019 ouster and subsequent self-exile, explained that he had come down with chikungunya, a mosquito-borne ailment with no treatment that causes fever and severe joint pain, and suffered complications that “caught me by surprise.”
“Take care of yourselves against chikungunya — it is serious,” the 66-year-old Morales said, appearing markedly more frail than in past appearances.
He dismissed rumors fueled by local politicians and fanned by social media that he would try to flee the country, vowing to remain in Bolivia despite the threat of arrest under conservative President Rodrigo Paz, whose election last October ended nearly two decades of rule by Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism party.
“Some media said, ‘Evo is going to leave, Evo is going to flee.’ I said clearly: I am not going to leave. I will stay with the people to defend the homeland,” he said.
Paz’s revival of diplomatic ties with the US and recent efforts to bring back the Drug Enforcement Administration — some 17 years after Morales expelled American anti-drug agents from the Andean country while cozying up to China, Russia, Cuba and Iran — have rattled the coca-growing region that serves as Morales’ bastion of support.
Paz on Thursday confirmed that he would meet Trump in Miami on March 7 for a summit convening politically aligned Latin American leaders as the Trump administration seeks to counter Chinese influence and assert US dominance in the region.
Before proclaiming the candidates he would endorse in Bolivia’s municipal and regional elections next month, Morales launched into a lengthy speech reminiscent of his once-frequent diatribes against US imperialism.
“This is geopolitical propaganda on an international scale,” he said of Trump’s bid to revive the Monroe Doctrine from 1823 in order to reassert American dominance in the Western Hemisphere. “They want to eliminate every left-wing party in Latin America.”
