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There is little doubt that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will seize a fourth consecutive term when Bangladesh goes to the polls on Sunday. The bigger question is what will remain of the country\u2019s democracy.<\/p>\n
The main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, has been crushed and left with little mobilizing capacity. Its leaders who are not already in jail are bogged down with endless court appointments<\/a> or are in hiding with the police on their tail. Ms. Hasina\u2019s Awami League, in power since 2009, has cleared the way for a race so one-sided that the party urged its own contestants to prop up dummy candidates so it does not look as if they won unchallenged.<\/p>\n The B.N.P. has boycotted the vote, after Ms. Hasina rejected its demand that she step aside during the campaign period so the election could be held under a neutral administration. Even as Bangladesh has appeared to be finding a path to prosperity and shedding a legacy of coups and assassinations, the uncontested election shows how politics in this country of 170 million remains hostage to decades of bad blood between the two major parties.<\/p>\n The possibility of violence hangs in the air. The opposition\u2019s effort to protest the vote, with repeated calls for nationwide strikes and civil disobedience, has been met with an intensified crackdown. More than 20,000 B.N.P. members and leaders have been arrested since the party\u2019s last major rally, in October, according to party leaders and lawyers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Diplomats in Dhaka said they had received reports of appalling conditions inside overcrowded prisons. At least nine opposition leaders and members have died in jail since the Oct. 28 crackdown, according to human rights organizations and reports in local news media.<\/p>\n As the B.N.P. has issued another call for a national strike, this one on the eve of the election, security has been increased, with the army deployed in the capital, Dhaka, and other regions. <\/p>\n Late Friday on a train in Dhaka, a fire suspected to be arson killed at least four people, security officials said. Tensions seemed only to escalate as security officials, indirectly, and ruling party members, very directly<\/a>, blamed the B.N.P. for the blaze that left at least four train cars burned and took an hour to extinguish.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n