Bangladesh election chief quits months after unfree poll

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s elections chief quit on Thursday (Sep 5) after denying political interference in January polls that re-elected autocratic leader Sheikh Hasina, who has since fled the country after a student-led revolution.
Kazi Habibul Awal and the country’s four other election commissioners all tendered their resignation, citing the ex-prime minister’s ouster as the reason for doing so.
They are the latest of several Hasina-appointed public officials to quit their posts since her departure, including the central bank boss and supreme court judges.
“I and the other commissioners intended to resign given the changed scenario of the country,” Awal told reporters.
The five commissioners presided over a January election that guaranteed Hasina a fourth consecutive term and her Awami League party and its allies a near-monopoly on seats.
The vote was marred by low turnout and was boycotted by the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) after thousands of members were arrested in a pre-emptive crackdown.
Rights groups and Western governments criticised the vote as unfree and unfair.
But Awal said the lack of genuine political opposition to Hasina meant that the vote itself was conducted with integrity.
“The main opposition party BNP and like-minded parties didn’t participate,” he said.
“As it was a one-party election, there was no necessity to influence the election.”
Hasina’s 15-year rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.
She fled to India by helicopter last month, where she remains, and was replaced by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus, who is heading an interim government.
Yunus faces the monumental task of charting democratic reforms after years of repression but his caretaker cabinet has yet to give an indication of when fresh elections will be held.
Senior bureaucrats who quit their posts last month had been given ultimatums to do so by leaders of the student protests which toppled Hasina.