Opposition Party Boycotting Bangladesh Election - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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As Bangladesh prepared for general elections on Sunday, a truck driver named Nur Islam was trying to haul a load of potatoes to Dhaka, the capital, along a route he knew would be targeted by protesters allied with the opposition.
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He took precautions, strapping on a helmet and leaving in the dead of night, but was still terrified after his truck was surrounded — not once, but twice — by young men hurling bricks.
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Street protests often accompany elections in Bangladesh, but political violence intensified in 2013, resulting in around 150 deaths, according to Human Rights Watch.
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The tension could rise to a new level on Sunday, when the country will go to the polls in a vote that is strikingly noncompetitive by Bangladeshi standards. The opposition has refused to participate, leaving more than half of the seats in Parliament uncontested.
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The country’s main opposition party, the Bangladesh National Party, called the boycott after the government refused to put in place an impartial caretaker government ahead of the elections, which has been customary in Bangladesh since 1996 and is seen as a guard against government manipulation. Protesters have set fire to vehicles and hurled bricks and homemade explosives, demanding that the government hold new elections on terms the opposition accepts.
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The violence increased in part when the government began prosecuting figures from Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence for war crimes, handing down death sentences to several leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamic political party. The Awami League has also hardened its view of Begum Khaleda Zia, the Bangladesh National Party’s leader and a two-time prime minister, accusing her of links to Islamist militants.
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“We are just protecting her safety. In her house, she is very safe.” Asked what threat Mrs. Zia faced, he said: “Nobody knows. Some miscreants can just shoot at her.”
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A low turnout could pressure the government to begin preparing for fresh elections, something that happened after a similar opposition boycott in 1996. Gowher Rizvi, an adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, said it was “almost without doubt” that Mrs. Hasina would call new elections ahead of schedule, noting that an election “loses its luster” when a major party does not take part.