Bangladesh expects high turnout in post-uprising election

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s Election Commission said Wednesday it expected a strong voter turnout in the first polls since a 2024 uprising ended 15 years of autocratic rule.

Many young people now in their 20s and 30s had been effectively deprived of the freedom to vote for their choice during Sheikh Hasina’s iron-fisted rule, commission official Abul Fazal Muhammad Sanaullah told reporters.

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, “we see euphoria among the people,” he said.

Young voters aged 18 to 37 make up 44 percent of the South Asian country’s 127 million-strong electorate.

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Many never cast a ballot during Hasina’s 15-year rule, which ended when she was toppled in August 2024.

According to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES), average voter turnout in Bangladesh stands at 53 percent.

Turnout peaked in 2008 at nearly 87 percent, when almost all major political parties participated under a nterim government.

It dropped sharply in later elections as several parties boycotted polls they alleged were rigged.

Some former election commissioners from Hasina’s tenure are now in jail.

“We have promised the citizens of Bangladesh that we will conduct a free and fair election,” Chief Election Commissioner AMM Nasir Uddin said.

Opinion polls vary widely, though most place the Bangladesh Nationalist Party ahead of a coalition – sometimes by only a narrow margin.

Officials said they remained alert after several polling centres in the northern town of Netrokona were torched on Tuesday, an incident the election commission described as isolated.

“We don’t rule out the possibility of such activities, and that’s why we have warned all our returning officers and law enforcement agencies to be careful,” Sanaullah said.

More than 300,000 security personnel, including the army and police, will be on duty.

Police records show that five people were killed and more than 600 injured in political clashes during the campaign period from December 11 to February 9.