DHAKA, JAN 6: As Bangladesh gears up for its 12th presidential election on January 7 (tomorrow), the air is thick with tension and uncertainty. The country faces a stark divide, with the ruling Awami League promising continuity and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) raising concerns about fair play and declaring a boycott.

With 300 National Assembly seats on the line, Tensions have spiked, as the opposition BNP has announced a boycott of the polls, calling them ‘dummy’ and announcing countrywide protests. On Wednesday, the country had deployed the army to facilitate the administration with holding free and fair elections.

Moreover, if outgoing prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid emerges victorious, she is poised to assume office as the premier for the fifth time.

While this is the 12th presidential election, only three have been direct elections. Following independence in 1974, the speaker of the Assembly, Mohammad Mohammadullah, became the first president without formal elections.

Awami League Dominance and Opposition Concerns:

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League has emerged victorious in the last three general elections (2008, 2014, and 2018), often with overwhelming majorities. However, the BNP, the country’s largest opposition party, has long accused the Awami League of rigging elections and stifling dissent.

BNP Chairman Tarique Rahman, who spent 18 months in jail in 2006-07 and currently lives in a self-imposed exile in London, sees the election as “predetermined” and has urged voters to abstain. This boycott poses a significant challenge to the legitimacy of the upcoming polls.

Timeline of Bangladesh’s Electoral History:

A brief look at Bangladesh’s recent electoral history reveals a pattern of Awami League dominance, often marked by boycotts and controversies:

2018: Awami League-led grand alliance wins landslide victory with 261 out of 300 seats in the elections held on Dec, 30, 2008, prompting accusations of rigging by the BNP.
2014: BNP boycotts the election held on 5 Jan, 2014, citing lack of fairness, leading to an Awami League landslide with a two-thirds majority. After a crackdown, opposition leader Khaledia Zia was put under house arrest.
2008: Awami League secures a two-thirds majority with 263 of the 300 seats in the election held on Dec, 29, 2008.
2001: In the elections held on Oct, 1, 2001. The BNP emerged as the clear winner in terms of seat, winning a secure majority of 193 out of 300 seats. The Awami league (AL) secured 62 seats. Khaleda Zia became the prime minister for the second time.
1996: The AL won the elections held on June 12, 1996 with 146 out of 300 seats in the National Assembly with the support of the Jatiya Party. This marked the beginning of Sheikh Hasina Wajid’s rule as the prime minister for the first time.
1986: The Bangladeshi presidential election were held on October, 15, 1986. The result were a victory for Jatiya Party, as its head Hussain Muhammad Ershad – a military dictator – helmed power and became the prime minister after staging a military coup.
Uncertainty Ahead:

With the BNP’s boycott and concerns about fair play, the upcoming election casts a shadow of uncertainty over Bangladesh’s political future. Whether the polls can be conducted peacefully and transparently, and whether they will be accepted by all parties, remains to be seen.

The country stands at a crossroads, and the choices made in the coming days will have profound implications for its democratic trajectory.

Bangladesh Elections: Violence erupted on the eve of the election as a passenger train was set on fire which officials called arson. Bangladesh is set to hold a general election with country’s prime minister Sheikh Hasina eyeing a fourth straight term and the fifth overall for her Awami League-led alliance. The country of almost 170 million people will vote tomorrow as polling begins at 8am and ends at 4pm. Counting will start soon after the end of voting. The initial results are expected by Monday. Here’s all you need to know about Bangladesh elections:

1. The main opposition party is Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of the former prime minister Khaleda Zia.
2. The BNP is boycotting the poll after demanding Sheikh Hasina’s resignation as the party wanted a caretaker government to administer the election.
3. Violence erupted on the eve of the election as a passenger train was set on fire which officials called arson. At least four people were killed and several polling booths set ablaze around the country, it was reported.
4. Women are almost half of the nearly 120 million eligible voters. First-time voters number about 15 million, news agency Reuters reported.
5. Nearly 2,000 candidates are vying for the 300 directly elected parliament seats. There is a record high 5.1% women candidates in the fray.
6. There are 436 independent candidates in the race, the most since 2001 which the BNP claimed that the Awami League has propped up “dummy” candidates to try to make the election look credible.
7. During Sheikh Hasina’s third term the country turned around the $416-billion economy and its massive garments industry. She was also praised internationally for sheltering nearly a million Rohingya Muslims fleeing from neighbouring Myanmar.
8. The country’s economy, once among the world’s fastest-growing, was rocked by violent protests recently after a jump in the cost of living.
9. Bangladesh struggles to pay for costly energy imports amid depleting dollar reserves and a domestic currency.
10. The International Monetary Fund cleared the first review of Bangladesh’s $4.7 billion bailout in December. This provided immediate access to $468.3 million and set $221.5 million for its climate change agenda.
11. Nearly 800,000 police, paramilitary and police auxiliaries will guard the polls on election day. Army, navy and air force have also been deployed while as many as 127 foreign observers will track the election process.

GAZA, PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES: Israel bombed Gaza on Saturday as the United Nations warned the Palestinian territory has become “uninhabitable” after three months of fighting that threatens to engulf the wider region.

AFP correspondents reported Israeli strikes early Saturday on Gaza’s southern city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of people have sought shelter from the fighting.

Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the conflict, with the UN warning of a deepening humanitarian crisis as famine looms and disease spreads.

Abu Mohammed, 60, who fled to Rafah from the central Bureij refugee camp, told AFP Gaza’s future was “dark and gloomy and very difficult”.

With much of the territory already reduced to rubble, UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said Friday that “Gaza has simply become uninhabitable”.

A picture taken from Rafah on January 6, 2024 shows smoke billowing over Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip during Israeli bombardment. PHOTO: AFP

The UN’s children’s agency warned that clashes, malnutrition and a lack of health services had created “a deadly cycle that threatens over 1.1 million children” in Gaza.

Israeli forces were continuing “to fight in all parts of the Gaza Strip, in the north, centre and south”, military spokesman Daniel Hagari said late Friday.

Hagari said Israeli forces were maintaining a “very high state of readiness” near the border with Lebanon following the killing of a top Hamas commander in a strike in Beirut. Israel has not claimed responsibility for the strike, but a US defence official told AFP that Israel carried it out.

The war in Gaza was triggered by an unprecedented attack on Israel launched by Hamas on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of around 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

The resistance fighters also took around 250 hostages, 132 of whom remain in captivity, according to Israel, including at least 24 believed to have been killed.

In response, Israel has launched a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that have killed at least 22,600 people, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

AFP correspondents reported Friday that Israeli strikes had hit the southern cities of Khan Yunis and Rafah as well as parts of central Gaza. A hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah reported that 35 people had been killed there.

The Israeli army said its forces had “struck over 100 targets” across Gaza in the previous 24 hours, including military positions, rocket launch sites and weapons depots.

The health ministry in Gaza said it had recorded 162 deaths over the same period.

A fighter jet bombed the central area of Bureij overnight, killing “an armed terrorist cell”, the army said, after what it described as an attempted attack on an Israeli tank. The Israeli army also claimed to have “killed a number of Palestinian militants” in clashes in Khan Yunis, a city that has become a major battleground.

Israeli troops also claimed to have uncovered tunnels under the Blue Beach Hotel in northern Gaza that had been used “by terrorists as shelter from where they planned and executed attacks”, according to the army.

AFPTV footage on Friday showed entire families, seeking safety from the violence, arriving in Rafah in overloaded cars and on foot, pushing handcarts stacked with possessions.

“We fled Jabalia camp to Maan (in Khan Yunis) and now we are fleeing from Maan to Rafah,” said one woman who declined to give her name. “(We have) no water, no electricity and no food.”

The Palestinian Red Crescent reported renewed shelling and drone fire in the area around Al-Amal hospital in Khan Yunis after seven displaced people, including a five-day-old baby, were killed while sheltering in the compound.

“We are facing a humanitarian catastrophe due to the spread of epidemics, with the hospital overcrowded with displaced people,” said a spokesman for Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in central Gaza.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, meanwhile, slammed a proposal by two Israeli ministers to resettle Gazans outside the territory.

“It’s not up to Israel to determine the future of Gaza, which is Palestinian land,” Colonna told CNN on Friday.

Top Western diplomats were in the region as part of a fresh push to raise the flow of aid into the besieged territory and calm rising tensions.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Turkey on Saturday where he was due to discuss the Gaza war with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Blinken will also visit several Arab states before heading to Israel and the occupied West Bank next week.

During his visit, Blinken plans to discuss with Israeli leaders “immediate measures to increase substantially humanitarian assistance to Gaza”, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell travelled to Lebanon on Friday for talks on “all aspects of the situation in and around Gaza”, including escalating tensions with Israel.

Demonstrators shout slogans, brandish their weapons and wave Palestinian flags during a march in solidarity with the people of Gaza in the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa. PHOTO: AFP

Germany’s top diplomat, Annalena Baerbock, was also due to travel to the region, a foreign ministry spokesman said. She plans to discuss “the dramatic humanitarian situation in Gaza” and tensions on the Israel-Lebanon border, spokesman Sebastian Fischer said.

The war in Gaza and almost daily exchanges of cross-border fire between Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah group since October 7 have raised fears of a wider conflagration.

Those fears grew this week following the killing of Hamas’ deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in Hezbollah’s stronghold in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Israel on Friday that the group would swiftly respond “on the battlefield” to Arouri’s death.

Israel’s military said Friday that its fighter jets had conducted fresh strikes against Hezbollah targets just across the border.