INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Bangladesh votes on Sunday in an election guaranteed to give prime minister sheikh Hasina her fifth term in office, after a boycott by
opposition parties whose ranks have been decimated by mass arrests.Hasina has presided over exceptional economic growth in a country once
party faces almost no effective rivals in the seats it is contesting but has avoided fielding candidates in a few seats, in an apparent
effort to avoid the legislature being labelled a one-party institution.Some voters said they had been threatened with the confiscation of
ensuing crackdown, the party says
The government puts the figure at 11,000.Scattered protests continued in the days ahead of the election, including a few hundred opposition
two-time premier Khaleda Zia, wife of a former military ruler.Hasina, 76, 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 the capital Dhaka, with her son Tarique Rahman helming the BNP in her stead from exile in
the biggest export market for the south Asian nation of 170 million, has sanctioned an elite police unit and its top commanders accused of
spikes in food costs and months of chronic blackouts in 2022.Wage stagnation in the garment sector, which accounts for about 85% of the
This article first appeared/also appeared in theguardian.com
