DHAKA – Sheikh Hasina was sworn in as Bangladesh’s prime minister for thefourth term Monday after election victory marred by deadly violence andclaims of widespread rigging.
Hasina, 71, has presided over record economic growth in the South Asiancountry of 165 million people but critics have accused her of creepingauthoritarianism.
Her ruling Awami League party and its allies won the December 30 electionsby a landslide, securing 288 seats in the 300-seat parliament compared tojust seven for the main opposition.
The campaign saw mass arrests of opposition activists and candidates andallegations of widespread rigging including ballot stuffing and voterintimidation. Seventeen people were killed on election day.
The European Union has called for a probe into allegations ofirregularities, saying “significant obstacles to a level playing field…tainted the electoral campaign and the vote.”
The United States expressed concern about “credible reports of harassment,intimidation and violence”.
The United Nations on Friday said there were indications that “reprisals”have targeted the opposition since the election, including physicalattacks, arbitrary arrests, harassment, disappearances and filing ofcriminal cases.
The opposition, which last week boycotted the oath taking ceremony of thenewly elected MPs, has demanded fresh polls under a neutral caretakergovernment, something Hasina and the election commission have rejectedoutright.
President Abdul Hamid administered Hassina’a oath in a ceremony at thepresidential palace, Bangabhaban. A 47-member cabinet with many new faceswas also sworn in.
To her supporters, Hasina is known as Bangladesh’s “mother of humanity” forallowing in hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing a militarycrackdown in neighbouring Myanmar in 2017.
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Opponents accuse her of jailing arch-foe Khaleda Zia on politicallymotivated charges, of orchestrating mass arrests, enforced disappearancesand passing Draconian anti-press freedom laws to try to cling to power.
She started her political career as a hero of the people, returning fromexile in 1981 to take over as Awami League leader and beginning a longstruggle to restore democracy in Bangladesh.
Hasina joined forces with Zia’s BNP to help oust military dictator HussainMuhammad Ershad in 1990 but the pair soon fell out and were branded the”Battling Begums”.
Their rivalry has dominated Bangladeshi politics for the last 30 years.
Hasina was first elected prime minister in 1996 but she struggled toemerge from the shadow of her father during her first term and lost the2001 contest.
She returned to power after winning the December 2008 polls by landslide,just months after she was imprisoned by a military-backed government oncorruption charges.
She has been in power ever since, presiding over economic expansion ofmore than six percent every year since 2009. GDP growth last year was 7.86percent and Hasina has promised to take that into double digits. – APP/AFP
