Bangladesh will keep a everyday election on January 7, the country’s chief election commissioner said Wednesday, a vote opposition events have threatened to boycott fearing that it will be rigged.
“The twelth parliamentary election will be held on January 7 in three hundred seats,” chief election commissioner Habibul Awal stated in a stay tv broadcast, urging events to maintain talks to unravel the political crisis.
Opposition events stated they would preserve a nationwide strike on Thursday in protest and warned the us of a was once being pushed in the direction of “conflict”.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has led the South Asian u. s. a. of round one hundred seventy million human beings for the previous 15 years and has been accused of ruling with an iron fist.
She is viewed as nearly positive to return to energy for a fourth time if the opposition boycott goes ahead.
Hasina has overseen outstanding financial boom however Western international locations have sounded the alarm over democratic backsliding and she has been accused by way of the opposition of vote-rigging at the previous two polls.
Opposition events have held foremost rallies calling for her to stop and for elections held with the aid of a impartial caretaker government.
Hasina has because launched a crackdown, with most of the pinnacle management of the foremost opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) arrested as properly as heaps of its supporters.
Obaidul Quader, widely wide-spread secretary of Hasina’s ruling Awami League party, stated the vote announcement used to be a “joyous day”.
The BNP, however, stated it will boycott the polls.
So too has Jamaat-e-Islami, the biggest Islamist celebration in the ninety percentage Muslim-majority country, and the Islami Andolon Bangladesh (IAB) party.
BNP spokesman Ruhul Kabir Rizvi, who is in hiding as he fears arrest, rejected the polls in a press convention broadcast online.
“That an election can be held beneath this authorities is a whole lie. We reject this biased election commission,” he said.
“I choose to inform the election fee that the u . s . has been pushed in the direction of conflict.”
Thousands of IAB supporters marched on the election fee workplace in protest towards the announcement on Wednesday.
Members stated greater than 10,000 humans took phase however police inspector Mizanur Rahman advised media the numbers have been round 3,000.
The election announcement got here days after the US ambassador to Bangladesh, Peter Haas, sought conferences with leaders of the three most important events in a bid to smash the political impasse.
Washington and the European Union have over and over known as on the authorities to preserve free and truthful polls.