Former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said on Wednesday she would share power with the opposition despite winning a massive majority in Bangladesh’s parliamentary election this week.
Hasina said she was ready to offer a senior parliamentary post to her bitter political rival, Begum Khaleda Zia, who has rejected the results of elections that returned the impoverished country to democracy after two years of emergency rule.
Speaking at her first post-election news conference, Hasina urged Khaleda to accept the results and said the vote had been fair, adding she wanted her government to work with all sides to establish a new political culture in Bangladesh.
”As winners, we have to deal with everything with a sense of forgiveness and accommodation instead of vengeance, to take the country forward in cooperation with all irrespective of party af filiation,” Hasina said.
Hasina’s Awami League and its allies won more than two thirds of Parliament’s 300 seats in Bangladesh’s first election in seven years on Monday.
An army-backed interim government had suspended many political rights after cancelling an election in January 2007 amidst widespread political violence.
Army intervention
Although independent monitors said the ballot was fair, Khaleda, another former prime minister, alleged widespread fraud. Her coalition took just 31 seats.
”So we reject the election outcome,” Khaleda said late on Tuesday. Her Bangladesh Nationalist Party had already complained on election night that its supporters were kept from voting in various parts of the country.
In the past, opposition parties in impoverished Bangladesh have often resorted to strikes and street protests that can turn violent — and provide a rationale for intervention in the political process by the military.
Widespread protests have yet to happen this week, although scattered violence has broken out in the low-lying Indian Ocean nation of more than 140-million people.
One man was killed and about 150 people injured on Tuesday in clashes between rival political activists, a private television station reported.
Strong security, imposed before Monday’s election, remained in place. The capital Dhaka appeared calm on Wednesday and a senior security official said there were no serious problems.
Hasina told UN election observers at her Dhaka home late on Tuesday she wanted to work with all sides to strengthen democracy and achieve economic progress, a spokesperson for her Awami League said.
Hasina and Khaleda alternated in power during the 15 years up to 2006 in Bangladesh’s personality-dominated politics. But many problems went unresolved, in part due to the protests, strikes and street violence by their parties when out of office.
The turbulence kept investors away and distracted the government from daunting challenges, including endemic corruption, political and social unrest and Islamic militancy.
Hasina has pledged to contain prices and promote growth in a country where 45% of the population live below the poverty line. – Reuters