DHAKA: Bangladesh began voting Sunday in an election guaranteed to give a fifth term in office to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, after a boycott led by an opposition party she branded a "terrorist organisation".
Hasina has presided over exceptional economic growth in a country once beset by grinding poverty, but her government has been accused of rampant human rights abuses and a ruthless opposition crackdown.
Her party faces almost no effective rivals in the seats it is contesting but has avoided fielding candidates in a few seats, an apparent effort to avoid the legislature being branded a one-party institution.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, whose ranks have been decimated by mass arrests, is leading a weekend general strike urging the public not to participate in what it calls a "sham" election.
But Hasina, 76, urged the public to cast their ballots and show their faith in the democratic process.
"The BNP is a terrorist organisation," she told waiting reporters after casting her vote at the Dhaka City College alongside her sister and daughter.
"I am trying my best to ensure that democracy should continue in this country," she added.
Early signs suggested turnout would be low, despite widespread reports of carrot-and-stick inducements aimed at bolstering the poll's legitimacy.
Only three people had cast ballots in the first 30 minutes of voting at one polling station in the capital Dhaka, AFP reporters saw.
Some voters said earlier they had been threatened with the confiscation of government benefit cards needed to access welfare payments if they refused to cast ballots for the ruling Awami League.
"They said they would seize it from me if I don't vote," Lal Mia, 64, told AFP in the central district of Faridpur.
"They said since the government feeds us, we have to vote for them."
The BNP and other parties staged months of protests last year demanding Hasina step down ahead of the vote.
Around 25,000 opposition cadres including the BNP's entire local leadership were arrested in the ensuing crackdown, the party says. The government puts the figure at 11,000.
Scattered protests continued in the days ahead of the election, including a few hundred opposition supporters who marched through central Dhaka on Friday -- a shadow of the hundreds of thousands seen at rallies last year.
The election commission said around 175,000 police officers and more than 515,000 members of the Ansar reserve force had been deployed to keep order during the vote.
Polls will stay open until 5:00 pm (1200 GMT) with results expected after midnight.
- 'Sham election' -
Politics in the world's eighth-most populous country was long dominated by the rivalry between Hasina, the daughter of the country's founding leader, and two-time premier Khaleda Zia, wife of a former military ruler.
Hasina, 76, has been the decisive victor since returning to power in a 2009 landslide, with two subsequent polls accompanied by widespread irregularities and accusations of rigging.
Zia, 78, was convicted of graft in 2018 and is now in ailing health at a hospital in the capital Dhaka, with her son Tarique Rahman helming the BNP in her stead from exile in London.
Rahman told AFP that his party, along with dozens of others, had refused to participate in a "sham election".
'Dangerous combination'
Hasina has accused the BNP of arson and sabotage during last year's protest campaign, which was mostly peaceful but saw several people killed in police confrontations.
Her government's security forces have long been dogged by allegations of excessive use of force -- charges it denies.
The United States, the biggest export market for the South Asian nation of 170 million, has imposed sanctions on an elite police unit and its top commanders accused of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.
Economic headwinds have left many dissatisfied with Hasina's government, after sharp spikes in food costs and months of chronic blackouts in 2022.
Wage stagnation in the garment sector, which accounts for around 85 percent of the country's $55 billion in annual exports, sparked industrial unrest late last year that saw some factories torched and hundreds more shuttered.
Pierre Prakash of the International Crisis Group said Hasina's government was clearly "less popular than it was a few years ago, yet Bangladeshis have little real outlet at the ballot box".
"That is a potentially dangerous combination."