Dismissing opposition complaints of vote rigging, Awami League chief Sheikh Hasina said that the Election Commission would have stopped the voting if that was the case.
Her remarks came on Monday (Dec 31) while addressing foreign observers and journalists at the prime minister’s official residence the Ganabhaban.
The Awami League is about to form a government for an unprecedented third straight term after winning the election on Sunday (Dec 30). It won 259 of 299 seats while the Grand Alliance it leads won 288 seats.
The BNP, which had boycotted the last general election in 2014 saying it would not be fair, won just five seats while its ally Gano Forum won two seats.
“It was a credible and transparent election . . . but (opposition) BNP’s debacle in the polls was caused by their own faults and weakness,” state news agency BSS quoted her saying.
Sheikh Hasina said the opposition was in a state of wilderness that caused their debacle in the Sunday’s elections while she would discharge her responsibility as the “premier of all” during her upcoming five-year tenure.
Sheikh Hasina identified BNP’s leadership vacuum as their prime weakness as the party chairperson Khaleda Zia was serving a prison term on graft charges while acting BNP chief “fugitive” Tarique Rahman was staying abroad to evade a life term imprisonment for masterminding the deadly 2004 grenade attack.
“The people did not know who the opposition leader was . . . though prominent lawyer Dr Kamal Hossain heads the opposition Jatiya Oikya Front (JOF)” with BNP being its key partner, Sheikh Hasina said.
Moreover, she said, the opposition fielded four to five candidates in every constituency in exchange of money, exposing the people to a state of confusion about the actual BNP candidate while many of them were unknown to ordinary voters.
The premier, however, said her Awami League-led Grand Alliance largely won the polls in view of the benefit her government could offer them for the past 10 years, cutting down the poverty rate, improving their financial condition and enhancing the GDP.
“They (people) wanted continuity of the government, development for which they overwhelmingly’ voted for us,” Sheikh Hasina said.