Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina warns of mass voter boycott as her party barred from election

Reuters:

NEW DELHI/DHAKA, Oct 29 – Millions of supporters of Bangladesh’s Awami League will boycott next year’s national election, after the party was barred from contesting the polls, ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told Reuters on Wednesday from her exile in New Delhi.

Hasina, 78, said she would not return to Bangladesh under any government formed after elections that exclude her party, and plans to remain in India, where she fled in August 2024 following a deadly student-led uprising.

An interim government headed by Nobel peace laureate Muhammad Yunus has governed Bangladesh since Hasina’s ouster and has pledged to hold elections next February.

“The ban on the Awami League is not only unjust, it is self-defeating,” Hasina said in emailed responses to Reuters — her first media engagement since her dramatic fall from power after 15 straight years at the helm of Bangladeshi politics.

“The next government must have electoral legitimacy. Millions of people support the Awami League, so as things stand, they will not vote. You cannot disenfranchise millions of people if you want a political system that works.”