Bangladesh election officials began counting votes Sunday after polls guaranteed to give a fifth term in office to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina closed, following a boycott led by an opposition party she branded a "terrorist organization."
Hasina has presided over breakneck economic growth in a country once beset by grinding poverty, but her government has been accused of rampant human rights abuses and a ruthless opposition crackdown.
Her party faced almost no effective rivals in the seats it contested, but it avoided fielding candidates in a few constituencies, an apparent effort to avoid the legislature being branded a one-party institution.
"Vote counting has begun," election commission spokesman Shariful Alam told AFP.
The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), whose ranks have been decimated by mass arrests, has called a general strike and urged the public not to participate in what it called a "sham" election.
But Hasina, 76, called for citizens to cast their ballots and show their faith in the democratic process.
"The BNP is a terrorist organization," she told reporters after casting her vote.
"I am trying my best to ensure that democracy should continue in this country," she added.
Results are expected as early as Monday morning.
A Bangladeshi polling officer puts indelible ink on the finger of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after arriving to cast her vote in Dhaka, Jan. 7, 2024.
'Farce' election
Initial signs suggested that turnout was low, despite widespread reports of carrot-and-stick inducements aimed at bolstering the poll's legitimacy.
At noon, according to Election Commission Secretary Jahangir Alam, turnout stood at 18.5 percent.
Many said they had not voted because the outcome was assured.
"When one party is participating and another is not, why would I go to vote?" said Mohammad Saidur, 31, who pulls a rickshaw.
"We all know who's going to win," said Farhana Manik, 27, a student.
Charity worker Shahriar Ahmed, 32, called the election a "farce" and did not vote.
"I would rather stay home and watch movies," Ahmed said.
BNP head Tarique Rahman, speaking from Britain where he lives in exile, said he worried about ballot stuffing.
"I fear that the election commission may increase voter turnout by using fake votes," he told AFP.
Some voters said earlier they had been threatened with the confiscation of government benefit cards needed to access welfare payments if they refused to cast ballots for the ruling Awami League.
"They said since the government feeds us, we have to vote for them," Lal Mia, 64, told AFP in the central district of Faridpur.
The BNP and other parties staged months of protests last year, demanding Hasina step down ahead of the vote.
Around 25,000 opposition cadres including the BNP's entire local leadership were arrested in the ensuing crackdown, the party says. The government puts the figure at 11,000.
Small and scattered protests continued in the days ahead of the election -- a shadow of the hundreds of thousands seen at rallies last year.
On Sunday, police in the port city of Chittagong said they had fired shotguns to break up a rally of up to 60 opposition members who had blocked a road using burning tires, adding that no one was injured.
A policeman fires tear gas to disperse a mob along a street during a protest in Chittagong, Bangladesh, Jan. 7, 2024.
The election commission said nearly 700,000 police officers and reservists had been deployed to keep order during the vote along with nearly 100,000 members of the armed forces.
Politics in the world's eighth-most populous country was long dominated by the rivalry between Hasina, the daughter of the country's founding leader, and two-time premier Khaleda Zia, wife of a former military ruler.
Hasina has been the decisive victor since returning to power in a 2009 landslide, with two subsequent polls accompanied by widespread irregularities and accusations of rigging.
Zia, 78, was convicted of graft in 2018 and is now in ailing health at a hospital in Dhaka, with her son Tarique Rahman helming the BNP in her stead from London.
Rahman told AFP that his party, along with dozens of others, had refused to participate in a "sham election."
'Dangerous combination'
Hasina has accused the BNP of arson and sabotage during last year's protest campaign, which was mostly peaceful but saw several people killed in police confrontations.
The government's security forces have long been dogged by allegations of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances -- charges it rejects.
The United States, the biggest export market for the South Asian nation of 170 million, has imposed sanctions on an elite police unit and its top commanders.
Economic headwinds have left many dissatisfied with Hasina's government, after sharp spikes in food costs and months of chronic blackouts in 2022.
Wage stagnation in the garment sector, which accounts for around 85 percent of the country's $55 billion in annual exports, sparked industrial unrest late last year that saw some factories torched and hundreds more shuttered.
Pierre Prakash of the International Crisis Group said before the vote that Hasina's government was clearly "less popular than it was a few years ago, yet Bangladeshis have little real outlet at the ballot box."
"That is a potentially dangerous combination."