Dhaka (AFP) - Former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed was heading for a landslide victory on Tuesday after unofficial results showed that she had crushed her bitter rival Khaleda Ziain national polls.
The alliance led by Sheikh Hasina's Awami League won an easy majority in Monday's elections, which marked the end of two years of emergency rule in the impoverished nation.Results announced by local television channels said Sheikh Hasina had passed the 151-seat simple majority needed to return her to power in Bangladesh, which she ruled between 1996 and 2001.Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its allies fared disastrously, winning just 27 seats to the Awami League's 201 by the early hours of the morning, according to the unofficial declarations."The Awami League is heading for a clear majority," election commission secretary Humayun Kabir confirmed to AFP.The party, formed in 1948, traditionally had socialist economic policies but Hasina, 61, has moved it towards a market-based approach that backs private sector expansion.Zia has been urging people to "save Islam and the country" by voting for her Islamist alliance nominees in the parliamentary election due Dec 29. "Save the country and Islam by voting for BNP (Bangladesh Nationalist Party) and its alliance, and don't cast your vote for those who defamed the religion," Zia said at late election rallies.Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina said such rhetoric "misguided" voters.The first polls in Bangladesh since 2001 attracted a turnout of 70 percent and saw none of the deadly unrest that forced the last scheduled vote to be cancelled and an army-backed interim government to take control.Long queues snaked outside voting stations all day as hundreds of thousands of police and troops stood ready to avert clashes between party activists or any attacks by Islamic extremists.Despite efforts by the caretaker regime to shake up a political system long seen as deeply corrupt, the two leading candidates have ruled alternately since 1991 and their mutual hatred has paralysed the country's development.elections During the campaign Sheikh Hasina and Zia wooed voters with promises of cheaper food, action against Islamic militancy and curbs on corruption.Both women, who were themselves jailed on corruption charges by the current regime before being released to contest the elections, had said they would accept the poll outcome.Some 50,000 armed troops had been on alert nationwide during voting, while 600,000 police officers were deployed to crack down on fraud or disruptions at the 35,000 polling booths.A UN-funded digital electoral roll, which has eliminated 12.7 million fake names, appeared to have resolved many of the problems that previous elections have suffered.At one polling station in Dhaka, voters lined up with their new photograph ID cards in hand."I'm a first-time voter and the atmosphere couldn't be any better," Mamun Howlader, a 21-year-old mechanic, told AFP. "There's a festive atmosphere. It's fun."But the BNP complained about intimidation at polling booths."There have been widespread irregularities," party spokesman Rizvi Ahmed said. "Our supporters have been kept from voting, and our polling agents and officials have been barred to perform their duties."Campaigning and voting were free of the serious unrest witnessed during previous elections, though police captured two dozen militants in recent days and also seized explosives, grenades and bombs.Among the few incidents reported Monday, about 25 people were arrested for handing out cash bribes, and there were minor scuffles between Awami League and BNP supporters.The vote was monitored by some 200,000 electoral observers, including 2,500 from abroad.The EU observers group said the absence of election-related violence had been "remarkable", though it added that "what comes next and the delivery of the final results is the crucial part."The army-backed government took power in January 2007 following months of political unrest in which at least 35 people were killed.The deaths prompted President Iajuddin Ahmed to cancel elections and impose a state of emergency that was lifted only on December 17.Bangladesh, a desperately poor nation of 144 million people, has a history of coups and counter-coups since winning independence from Pakistan in 1971.The Awami League and the BNP have often been accused of anti-democratic tactics, with both crippling the country during their spells in opposition by boycotting parliament and staging national strikes
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