Bangladesh readies for polls, worry among Hasina supporters

GOPALGANJ, BANGLADESH: Bangladesh is preparing for the first election since the overthrow of Sheikh Hasina, but supporters of her banned Awami League (AL) are struggling to decide whether to shift their allegiance.

In Gopalganj, south of the capital Dhaka and a strong bastion of Hasina’s iron-grip rule, residents are grappling with an election without the party that shaped their political lives for decades.

“Sheikh Hasina may have done wrong — she and her friends and allies — but what did the millions of Awami League supporters do?” said tricycle delivery driver Mohammad Shahjahan Fakir, 68, adding that he would not vote.

“Why won’t the ‘boat’ symbol be there on the ballot paper?” he said, referring to AL’s former election icon.

The Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people will hold elections on February 12, its first since the uprising.

Hasina, who crushed opposition parties during her rule, won landslide victories in Gopalganj in every election since 1991.

After a failed attempt to cling to power and a brutal crackdown on protesters, she was ousted as prime minister in August 2024 and fled to India.

She was sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity by a court in Dhaka in November, and her former ruling party, once the country’s most popular, has been outlawed.

Human Rights Watch has condemned the AL ban as “draconian”.

“There’s so much confusion right now,” said Mohammad Shafayet Biswas, 46, a banana and betel leaf seller in Gopalganj.

“A couple of candidates are running from this constituency — I don’t even know who they are.”

As a crowd gathered in the district, one man shouted: “Who is going to the polling centres? We don’t even have our candidates this time.” APP