Bangladesh nationalists celebrate landslide win

AFP | Dhaka

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The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) celebrated a landslide victory yesterday in the first elections held since a deadly 2024 uprising, with leader Tarique Rahman to become prime minister.

Election Commission figures said the BNP alliance had won 212 seats, compared with 77 for the Jamaat-e-Islami alliance -- which said earlier it had “serious questions about the integrity of the results process”.

Rahman said two days before polling he was “confident” that his party -- crushed during the autocratic 15-year rule of ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina -- would regain power in the South Asian nation of 170 million people.

Hasina’s Awami League party was barred from taking part.

The US embassy congratulated Rahman and the BNP for a “historic victory”, while neighbouring India praised Rahman’s “decisive win” in a significant step after recent rocky relations with Bangladesh.

China and Pakistan, which both grew closer to Bangladesh since the uprising and the souring of ties with India, where Hasina has sheltered since her ouster, also congratulated the BNP.

The vote passed largely peacefully and the country has been reported to have been calm since polling day