TURNOUT plunged in Bangladesh’s general election today as major opposition parties called for a boycott of the “one-sided farce.”

Authorities said about 40 per cent of eligible voters participated, down from 80 per cent in the last general election in 2018.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is bound to win a fourth consecutive term given the boycott, but opposition parties including the Bangladesh National Party (BNP) and the Left Democratic Front, which includes the Communist Party, say the vote would not have been fair in any case, citing mass arrests of opposition politicians. BNP leader Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister, is under house arrest.

Ms Hasina has slammed the BNP as “terrorist” and blamed it for arson attacks designed to undermine the poll, with one deadly attack on a train on Friday starting a blaze that killed four people. 

Police have arrested seven members of the BNP and its youth wing over the attack, but the party denies having anything to do with it. Violence continued yesterday, with a supporter of Ms Hasina’s Awami League being stabbed to death in Dhaka’s Munshiganj district.

The Communist Party of Bangladesh said the elections were illegitimate, repeating a demand that a neutral caretaker government be appointed to hold an election.

General secretary Ruhin Hossain Prince called on people to “stop the joke election” and condemned Ms Hasina’s “reign of fear” which had “destroyed democratic rights.”

But he condemned acts of violence and the arson attack on the train, saying perpetrators of such crimes should face “exemplary punishment.” Citizens should stay at home on polling day, but work to build “a mass movement and mass struggle” against the government going forward.