DHAKA, 6 October — Khaleda Zia will be sworn in on Monday as Bangladesh’s prime minister, officials said, as election authorities brushed aside the defeated Awami League’s demands for a new vote.
Khaleda, whose Islamist-allied Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) coalition won parliamentary elections on Monday by a convincing two-thirds majority, will be sworn in as the country’s 14th prime minister at 7:00 p.m., officials said.
President Shahabuddin Ahmad will administer the oath to Khaleda and her Cabinet members at the Bangabhaban presidential palace, one day after parliament is sworn in, palace spokesman Abu Zafar Muhammad Iqbal said.
Foreign diplomats have already begun congratulating Khaleda and offering to cooperate with the new government.
The Awami League of defeated Prime Minister Hasina Wajed has lodged angry protests over the vote, which they say was rigged. The party has pledged to boycott the new parliament and has called for a new vote, a demand rejected by election authorities. “Question does not arise to arrange a re-election,” Chief Election Commissioner M.A. Sayed told reporters late Thursday after a noisy meeting with an Awami League delegation headed by senior leader Abdus Samad Azad.
“We demanded re-election as the people did not accept the result,” Azad was quoted as saying after the meeting, during which the delegation and Sayed reportedly had heated arguments.
The poll chief dismissed the allegation of vote-rigging and intimidation and said the election was “accepted by and large” and received wide international acclaim.
“I think this time the election was more credible than that of 1991 and 1996,” Sayed said, quoted by the Daily Star newspaper. The Awami League has also threatened street protests unless fresh elections are called by Oct. 10, sparking new concerns over future stability in politically volatile and impoverished Bangladesh.
At least nine people have been killed and more than 300 others were injured in sporadic post-poll violence that included clashes and gunfights. And in the run-up to the election, more than 140 people were killed in political violence.
Out of 283 seats in parliament declared unofficially, the BNP and its three right-wing allies have bagged 201, leaving the outgoing ruling party with only 62 deputies so far in the 300-member parliament.
Officials also released poll figures which showed 74.87 percent of the 75-million-strong electorate turned up to vote, almost identical to the turnout in the last election in 1996. Dhaka-based diplomats began meeting Khaleda to offer their countries’ readiness to cooperate with the new government.
Diplomats from South Asia’s key rivals India and Pakistan met Khaleda separately. The premier-elect also met with US Ambassador Mary Ann Peters and envoys from Canada, Britain and other European countries. For Khaleda, the widow of former President Ziaur Rahman, it will be her second term as the prime minister after leading the BNP to power in 1991. It is the first time since 1973, two years after the country split from Pakistan, that a political party or alliance in Bangladesh has won such a commanding majority.
