Bangladesh’s opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, led by Tarique Rahman, appeared on course for a sweeping victory in national elections, with television projections showing the party vaulting past the 150-seat mark needed for a parliamentary majority in the first vote since a deadly 2024 uprising.
The projections, based on partial counts late Thursday, indicated that Jamaat-e-Islami and its Islamist-led allies had secured 63 seats — a sharp surge from previous performances but well short of an outright win. Official results had not been released by the Election Commission, which continued tallying votes in 299 of the country’s 300 constituencies. Another 50 seats reserved for women will be allocated to parties in proportion to their final tallies.
- Advertisement -
Senior BNP leader Ruhul Kabir Rizvi claimed a “sweeping victory” in a party statement and urged supporters to forgo street celebrations. “There will be no victory rally despite the BNP’s sweeping victory,” he said, calling instead for special prayers at mosques after Friday’s Jumma prayers across the country.
Tarique Rahman, 60, is poised to become prime minister if the projections hold. In the run-up to the vote, he told AFP he was “confident” the BNP would regain power after 15 years during which his party was sidelined. BNP election committee spokesman Mahdi Amin said the party was on track to win at least a two-thirds majority and that Rahman had won both seats he contested.
Despite weeks of tension, polling day was largely peaceful, the Election Commission said, reporting only “a few minor disruptions.” The vote unfolded under heavy security deployments nationwide and after warnings from United Nations experts of “growing intolerance, threats and attacks” and a “tsunami of disinformation.” Police records show at least five people were killed and more than 600 injured in political clashes during the campaign.
Interim leader Muhammad Yunus, 85, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist who has overseen the caretaker administration since the ouster of longtime prime minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024, urged calm from all sides and vowed to step down once a new government is formed. “We may have differences of opinion, but we must remain united in the greater national interest,” he said after casting his ballot, adding that the country had “ended the nightmare and begun a new dream.”
Yunus’s administration barred Hasina’s Awami League from contesting the polls, a decision that shaped the electoral map and drew sharp condemnation from the former ruling party. Hasina, 78, who a Bangladeshi court has sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity, issued a statement from hiding in India denouncing the vote as an “illegal and unconstitutional election.”
Alongside the parliamentary ballot, voters participated in a national referendum on a sweeping democratic reform charter championed by the caretaker government. The proposals include term limits for the prime minister, creation of an upper house of parliament, expanded presidential powers and stronger judicial independence. Television projections suggested the electorate backed the charter, though official tallies were pending.
For a nation of roughly 170 million, the stakes are high. A BNP majority — potentially reinforced by the allocation of women’s reserved seats — would open a new chapter after years of polarized politics and mass protests. Yet questions about the credibility of the process and the exclusion of the Awami League are likely to shadow the outcome, setting the stage for legal challenges, international scrutiny and tests of the next government’s mandate.
The Election Commission had not announced a timeline for final results. Parties and independent observers said they would continue to monitor counting and tabulation through the night. For many Bangladeshis who queued quietly at polling stations, the hope is less about partisan triumph than about stability after a turbulent year — and whether a new parliament can deliver on promises of reform without relapsing into the cycles of confrontation that have defined the country’s recent past.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
