Bangladesh votes in elections without opposition

(Patria) - Bangladesh is voting today in elections that guarantee Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina her fifth term in power, following a boycott by opposition parties whose ranks have been decimated by mass arrests.

Hasina has presided over extraordinary economic growth in a country once plagued by deepening poverty, but her government has been accused of massive human rights abuses and a ruthless crackdown on the opposition, AFP reports.

Hasina's party faces almost no effective rivals for the seats it is contesting, but it has not fielded candidates in several constituencies, an apparent attempt to avoid the legislature being branded a one-party institution of the ruling Awami League.

The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and other parties organised month-long protests last year demanding Hasina step down before the vote. Around 25,000 opposition cadres, including the entire local leadership of the BNP, have been arrested in the ensuing crackdown, the party says. The government estimates the figure at 11,000. Scattered protests continued in the days leading up to the election, including a march by a few hundred opposition supporters through the centre of Dhaka on Friday, a shadow of the hundreds of thousands seen at rallies last year.

Politics in the world's eighth most populous country has long been dominated by the rivalry between Hasina, the daughter of the country's founder, and two-time premier Khaleda Zia, the wife of a former military ruler.

Hasina (76) has been the decisive winner since returning to power in a landslide in 2009, with two subsequent polls marred by widespread irregularities and vote-rigging allegations.

Zia (78) was convicted of corruption in 2018 and is now in poor health in hospital in the capital Dhaka, with her son Tarique Rahman leading the BNP in her stead from exile in London.

Rahman told AFP his party, along with dozens of others, had refused to participate in the "sham election".

Hasina has accused the BNP of arson and sabotage during last year's protest campaign, which was largely peaceful but saw several people killed in clashes with police. Her government's security forces have long faced accusations of excessive force, which she denies. The United States, the biggest export market for the South Asian nation of 170 million people, has sanctioned an elite police unit and its top commanders accused of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.

Economic headwinds have left many disgruntled with Hasina's government, following sharp jumps in the cost of food and months of chronic power outages in 2022.

Stagnant wages in the garment sector, which accounts for around 85 percent of the country's $55 billion annual exports, sparked unrest late last year in which some factories were torched and hundreds shut.