Bangladesh election results live: BNP claims win, Jamaat ‘not satisfied’

Tarique Rahman’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) says it has won a majority in Thursday’s landmark election and will form the next government.
Jamaat-e-Islami, which is yet to concede defeat, says it is not “satisfied” with the vote count and is raising “serious questions about the integrity of the results process”.
Voter turnout at 59.44%: Election Commission
Bangladesh’s Election Commission has reported a 59.44 percent turnout for yesterday’s election.

Election Commissioner Abul Fazal Md Sanaullah said in a statement that they were committed to ensuring a transparent and impartial election.

He also asked that any administrative shortcomings be forgiven and that the commission aim to organise better elections in the future.

A reminder that the Election Commission’s results website remains inaccessible and no results have yet been posted on the page.

We will bring you all the latest results here and on our live tracker here as soon as they are announced officially.
BNP seeks rightward political shift
In second place is Jamaat-e-Islami, the conservative religious party, which was banned for many years under Sheikh Hasina.

The young voters had voiced concerns about the direction of politics if Jamaat-e-Islami were to come to power, particularly in terms of women’s rights. They were allied with one of the student parties, the National Citizen Party.

In the end, they’ve come in a strong second, but a long distance behind the leaders.

The BNP also looked for a political shift rightwards in the wake of the uprising, which takes in perhaps more political and religious thinking.

Indeed, the BNP has said they won’t have celebrations on the streets, but instead offer Friday prayers in the mosques. They, too, are counting on this rightward shift.

The real question is what the youth make of the BNP: It’s not the fresh-faced political party they would have hoped to see embodying change in this country.