Bangladesh's ruling alliance won virtually every parliamentary seat in the country's general election, according to official results released on Monday, giving Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina a third straight term despite allegations of intimidation and the opposition disputing the outcome. Alamgir had said Sunday he was rejecting any outcome, but it was unknown after his win was declared what he would do now. More than a dozen people were killed in election-related violence on Sunday and the campaign preceding the vote had been dogged by allegations of arrests and jailing of thousands of Hasina's opponents. He said the alliance would hold a meeting Monday to decide its next course. Calls to several Hasina aides seeking comment were not immediately returned. A headline in the country's leading English-language newspaper, the Daily Star, read, "Hat-trick for Hasina, BNP found missing in polling; atmosphere festive, tuned only to ruling party", referring to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. The poll is being seen as a referendum on what critics call Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s increasingly authoritarian rule, amid complaints from ruling party and opposition activists of attacks on supporters and candidates. The Associated Press received more than 50 calls on Sunday from people across the country who identified themselves as opposition supporters complaining of intimidation and threats, and being forced to vote in front of ruling party men inside the polling booths. While rights groups have sounded the alarms about the erosion of Bangladesh's democracy, Hasina has promoted a different narrative, highlighting an ambitious economic agenda that has propelled Bangladesh past larger neighbors Pakistan and India by some development measures. Voters “will give us another opportunity to serve them so that we can maintain our upward trend of development, and take Bangladesh forward as a developing country,” Ms Hasina, who is seeking a third consecutive term, said after casting her ballot along with her daughter and sister in Dhaka. Sheikh Hasina is seeking a third consecutive term but faces opposition from another former prime minister Khaleda Zia, leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, who has been ruled ineligible to run because she is in prison for corruption. In Ms Zia’s absence, opposition parties have formed a coalition led by Kamal Hossain, an 82-year-old Oxford-educated lawyer and former member of Ms Hasina’s Awami League party. Both sides were hoping to avoid a repeat of 2014, when Zia and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party boycotted elections and voter turnout in the South Asian nation of 160 million was only 22 percent. More than half of the 300 parliamentary seats were uncontested. Hasina said the victory was "nothing for her personal gain, rather it is a great responsibility toward the country and people". On Sunday, some 104 million people in the Muslim-majority country were eligible to vote, including many young, first-time voters, in Bangladesh's 11th general election since independence from Pakistan. About 600,000 security officials, including army and paramilitary forces, have been deployed across the country in a bid to contain violence in Bangladesh’s 11th general elections. Bangladesh’s telecommunications regulator shut down mobile internet services nationwide to prevent possible protests from being organised.
The Awami League led by Sheikh Hasina is declared as the winner of the election with Hasina to serve her third consecutive term as Prime Minister of Bangladesh.