Bangladesh’s opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Tarique Rahman, won a landslide victory in the first election since a deadly 2024 uprising, the Election Commission said Friday, winning a majority of more than two-thirds in the country's parliament. Senior BNP leader Ruhul Kabir Rizvi claimed a “sweeping victory”.
Issued on: 13/02/2026 - 02:16Modified: 13/02/2026 - 11:59
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) on Friday won a landslide victory in the first elections held since a deadly 2024 uprising, with leader Tarique Rahman poised to become prime minister.
The BNP won a majority of more than two-thirds of the seats in parliamentary polls, the Election Commission said on Friday.
Election Commission figures said the BNP alliance had won 212 seats, compared with 77 for the Islamist-led Jamaat-e-Islami alliance, commission senior secretary Akhtar Ahmed told reporters.
Turnout was 59 percent. A referendum on a sweeping democratic charter was endorsed by 60 percent of voters.
Rahman had told AFP two days before polling he was "confident" that his party – crushed during the 15 years of ousted premier Sheikh Hasina's autocratic rule – would regain power in the South Asian nation of 170 million people.
"This victory was expected. It is not surprising that the people of Bangladesh have placed their trust in a party ... capable of realising the dreams that our youth envisioned during the uprising," Salahuddin Ahmed, a leading BNP committee member, told AFP Friday after local media predicted the party's victory.
"This is not a time for celebration, as we will face mounting challenges in building a country free from discrimination."
Read morePivotal election in Bangladesh as 'the country goes to the polls after 17 years of authoritarianism'
Senior BNP leader Ruhul Kabir Rizvi earlier called on followers to give thanks in prayer on Friday rather than celebrate on the streets.
"There will be no victory rally despite the BNP's sweeping victory," he said in a party statement released ahead of the official results. "We will hold special prayers at mosques after Jumma (Friday) prayers across the country."
Peaceful polls
Party workers spent the whole night in front of the BNP offices.
"We will join the nation-building effort led by Tarique Rahman," Md Fazlur Rahman, 45, told AFP.
"Over the last 17 years, we have suffered a lot, faced multiple politically motivated cases and lost a factory I owned."
Heavy deployments of security forces are posted countrywide, and UN experts warned ahead of the voting of "growing intolerance, threats and attacks", and a "tsunami of disinformation".
Political clashes killed five people and injured more than 600 during campaigning, police records show.
But polling day was largely peaceful, according to the Election Commission, which reported only "a few minor disruptions".
'Ended the nightmare'
Interim leader Muhammad Yunus, who will step down once the new government takes power, has urged all sides to stay calm.
"We may have differences of opinion, but we must remain united in the greater national interest," he said.
The 85-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has led Bangladesh since Hasina's rule ended with her ouster in August 2024.
His administration barred her Awami League party from contesting the polls.
Yunus, after casting his vote, said the country had "ended the nightmare and begun a new dream".
Hasina, 78, sentenced to death in absentia for crimes against humanity, issued a statement from hiding in India, where she called the vote an "illegal and unconstitutional election".
Yunus has championed a sweeping democratic reform charter to overhaul what he called a "completely broken" system of government and to prevent a return to one-party rule.
Voters also cast their ballots in a referendum on the charter, ultimately endorsing its proposals for prime ministerial term limits, a new upper house of parliament, stronger presidential powers and greater judicial independence.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
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