Dhaka, Bangladesh – Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s astronomical victory in Bangladesh‘s general elections, analysts and opposition leaders say, will turn the South Asian country into a “one-party state”.

The Grand Alliance led by the ruling Awami League (AL) party bagged 288 seats, leaving just 10 seats for others, including seven seats for the main opposition alliance led by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

Voting was cancelled on two seats. In the 350-member parliament or Jatiya Sangshad, 50 seats are reserved for women.

Shahab Enam Khan, Professor of International Relations at Dhaka-based Jahangirnagar University, said: “the election result didn’t come as a surprise”.

“The widely reported electoral irregularities, deaths and violation of laws bear the testimonies of fragile democratic institutions in the country. While the ruling party will continue to find solace in its astronomical victory, the opposition has to take responsibility for its own political defeat too,” he said.

“The cumulative result will naturally push Bangladesh into a one-party state, which, if remained unchecked, may further strengthen the culture of impunity in the form of partisan interests,” he said.

The Jatiya Oikya Front, the main opposition alliance led by the BNP, rejected the election results accusing the government of orchestrating vote rigging and ballot stuffing.

The opposition said the government denied them a level playing field during the campaigning, with mass arrests of its workers on what it called trumped-up charges. It added that many of its candidates were attacked by the ruling party workers leading up to the polls.

In 2014 too, the BNP boycotted the general elections, which observers had called an “electoral farce”.

‘Climate of fear’

Kamal Hossain, 82, the convener of the opposition front and a former Hasina ally, on Monday, called for reelection – a demand swiftly rejected by the Election Commission.

It’s the battle between one percent of the plunderer and the 99 percent of the plundered people of Bangladesh

Mujahidul Islam Selim, president, the Communist Party of Bangladesh

“We’ve had bad elections in the past but I must say that it is unprecedented how bad this particular election was,” said Hossain, who emerged as the face of the opposition.

Calling it a “flawed” election, the Economist magazine said the Awami League “flagrantly wielded the full power of state institutions, from police to courts to the Election Commission, to promote its chances.”

The London-based magazine wrote “that the BNP was not really the biggest loser. The biggest loss was for democracy itself.”

Rights bodies and western powers have echoed the opposition concerns regarding election day violence, which claimed 17 lives, and voting irregularities.

“An independent and impartial commission should investigate the serious allegations of abuses” in the elections, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.

But the government maintains that people voted for the ruling party for the development work carried out in the past 10 years.

“What do people want? They want to fulfil their basic needs. When they feel that yes, only this government can ensure it, then definitely they will vote for us,” Hasina, 71, told foreign journalists and election observers a day after the results were announced.

‘Battle between 1 percent vs 99 percent’

Mujahidul Islam Selim, the president of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB), said Bangladesh is passing through a “crisis of democracy”.

The CPB unsuccessfully contested in 74 constituencies – a result Selim blamed on the “farcical elections”.

Of the 39 parties that participated in the elections, only nine could find representation, with an overwhelming 96 percent of the seats going to the ruling alliance.

“Even though we are supposed to have a multi-party democracy, we have unfortunately failed to institutionalise it,” Selim told Al Jazeera.

Development is not just about building bridges and highways, we have to also look into sustainability

Arup Rahee, Singer and activist

He believes that the ruling party has been appropriated by the top one percent of the wealthy Bangladeshis, who have disproportionately benefited from the high economic growth of the South Asian nation in the last decade.

“The economy has been growing at a rate of almost 7 percent. But the real income of the 99 percent of the people has grown only marginally.

“Where does the rest of the wealth go? It goes to a small section. And this small section has now captured power and trying to perpetuate its rule,” the communist leader said.

In Dhaka, critics of the government say there is a “climate of fear”. A growing number of activists, journalists and academics have resorted to self-censorship to avoid reprisals from the Hasina government.

Arup Rahee, singer and activist based in Dhaka, fears freedom of expression will be further curtailed under the new government.

“There is an environment of self-censorship across the board, which people fear may intensify in the near future,” said Rahee, with a flowing beard sitting in his office in Dhaka.

Hasina government and its supporters have pushed the narrative of rapid economic growth and expanding garment exports that have lifted tens of thousands of people out of poverty.

Bangladesh, a poor country of over 160 million people, has seen its per capita income tripled under her tenure.

‘Space for dialogue’

The government has accused critics, who have raised concerns over inequitable development, as serving vested interests.

“It is not healthy when only one narrative of democracy is promoted. There must be a space for dialogue between different narratives to take place. That only can ensure a healthy and just democracy in a society like Bangladesh,” Rahee, the singer-activist, said.

“Development is not just about building bridges and highways, we have to also look into sustainability.”

Mahbubul Haque Hanif, the Joint General Secretary, of the Awami League admitted that “it’s not healthy for a democracy without an opposition” but blamed the BNP for failing in their role as an opposition party”.

 

“We do not need an opposition that sets fire to public properties, buses, trains, and kill people,” he said.

He rejected that Hasina government is “authoritarian”.

“You can see we have [a] lot of TV channels, where talk show participants criticise the government on many points,” he said.

“In Bangladesh, there is a culture that the defeated parties point fingers at the government and the election commission,” he said.

But the fears are not unfounded, on Tuesday, a local journalist Hedayet Hossain Mollah was arrested in Khulna and another one is on the run for reporting election irregularities. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called for his release.

“Arresting a journalist for reporting on alleged election irregularities and raising legitimate questions is a disappointing way for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League party to respond to their re-election,” CPJ Asia Program Coordinator Steven Butler said in a statement.

One local journalist quipped it is “Her Majesty’s” rule in Bangladesh, referring to Hasina, who wields complete control on the party that fought for the liberation of the country in 1971.

A former Member of Parliament from the BNP said Hasina is taking the country towards one-party state – something her father and the country’s founding father had proposed before he was assassinated by military officers.

Selim of the communist party said that there is no opposition in the parliament but he hopes the “opposition will come from the society”.

“It’s the battle between one percent of the plunderer and the 99 percent of the plundered people of Bangladesh.”

Additional reporting by Saqib Sarker from Dhaka

Thailand is bracing for a potentially devastating Tropical Storm Pabuk, which is set to bring heavy rains and high seas to the country’s southern provinces and famed beach resorts popular with domestic and foreign tourists.

Weather authorities on Thursday said the storm was moving west from the tip of Indonesia into the Gulf of Thailand with maximum winds of 65 kilometres an hour.

Heavy downpours are forecast until Saturday in most parts of southern Thailand, including popular tourist destinations such as Phuket, Koh Samui and Krabi.

There has been no official evacuation order but tens of thousands of tourists have fled the resort islands of Koh Phangan and Koh Tao as tourists packed onto ferries bound for the southern Thai mainland, as swimming was banned and boats were set to suspend services.

“I think the islands are almost empty … between 30,000 to 50,000 have left since the New Year’s Eve countdown parties,” Krikkrai Songthanee, Koh Phangnan district chief, told AFP news agency.

The acting mayor of Koh Tao, one of Southeast Asia’s finest diving spots, said boats to Chumphon on the mainland were crammed with tourists, but several thousand guests were still on the island likely to brave the storm.

On Koh Samui, authorities said they were preparing shelters for any tourists who decide to wait out the storm.

High seas

Pabuk, which means a giant catfish in Lao, is Thailand’s first tropical storm in the area outside of the monsoon season for around 30 years.

It was unlikely to intensify into a full-blown typhoon, according to forecasters.

“But we expect waves as high as five or seven metres near the eye of the storm. Normally in the Gulf of Thailand there are only two-metre high waves,” Phuwieng Prakammaintara, director general at the Thai Meteorological Department, told reporters.

“It’s difficult to predict the severity of the storm so people should comply with authorities’ recommendations.”

Pabuk is also expected to dump heavy rain across the south, including the southernmost provinces bordering Malaysia of Pattani, Narathiwat and Yala.

A Chinese probe has made the first-ever landing on the far side of the moon, according to state media, in a groundbreaking mission in space exploration.

The unmanned Chang’e 4 lunar lander and rover spacecraft touched down at 10:26am (02:26 GMT) on Thursday, China Central Television said in a brief announcement.

It relayed a photo of the “dark side” of the moon to the Queqiao satellite, which will relay communications between controllers on Earth and the far side of the moon.

The far side faces away from Earth and is relatively unexplored. 

The probe is carrying a robot vehicle that is to explore both above and below the lunar surface after arriving at the South Pole-Aitken basin’s Von Karman crater. 

It is also equipped with a panorama camera and measuring devices to conduct experiments.

It will perform radio-astronomical studies that, because the far side always faces away from Earth, will be “free from interference from our planet’s ionosphere, human-made radio frequencies and auroral radiation noise”, according to space industry expert Leonard David.

China’s space programme has benefited from cooperation with Russia and European countries, although it was excluded from the 420-tonne International Space Station, mainly due to US concerns over transfer of technology that could be used for military purposes.

Its programme also suffered a rare setback last year with the failed launch of its Long March 5 rocket.

China conducted its first crewed space mission in 2003, making it only the third country after Russia and the US to do so.

It has put a pair of space stations into orbit, one of which is still operating as a precursor to a more than 60-tonne station that is due to come online in 2022. The launch of a Mars rover is planned for the mid-2020s.

Dark side

The moon’s far side is also known as the dark side because it faces away from Earth and remains comparatively unknown.

It has a different composition than sites on the near side, where previous missions have landed.

The United States sent 12 astronauts between 1969 and 1972 to the Earth’s satellite.

The first Soviet probe, Luna 24, landed there in 1976. It wasn’t followed until 2013, when the first Chinese probe, the Chang’e 3, landed.

China plans to send its Chang’e 5 probe there next year and have it return to Earth with samples – the first time that will have been done since 1976. A crewed lunar mission is also under consideration.

In 2015, NASA, the US space agency, released an animation that shows satellite images of the far side of the moon.

NASA says the images show the moon illuminated by the sun, as it crosses between the DSCOVR spacecraft’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera and telescope, and the Earth – one million miles away.