Big Hasina majority in Bangladesh: unofficial results

By Nizam Ahmed and Jerry Norton

DHAKA (Reuters) - An alliance under Bangladesh's former prime minister Sheikh Hasina won a massive parliamentary majority in the country's first polls in seven years, unofficial results showed, but a rival party complained of irregularities.

Analysts said it was unclear if the losers would accept the results or take their supporters onto the streets to protest. Political confrontations, strikes and street violence have often hampered the effectiveness of Bangladeshi governments.

"It's critical that both sides accept the result of what appears to be a free and fair election. If not, Bangladesh risks sliding back into the anarchy, violence and corruption that have characterized its past," U.S.-based Asian Society Fellow Sheridan Prasso told Reuters.

Unofficial results from election centers around the country showed Hasina's "Grand Alliance" led by her Awami League had so far won 240 seats in the 300-seat parliament.

Just 31 had gone to a group led by Begum Khaleda Zia, another former prime minister and Hasina's rival for power.

The Monday parliamentary vote returned Bangladesh, a country of more than 140 million people, to democracy after two years of emergency rule imposed by an army-backed government.

Official results will not be available until later, and Hasina's Awami League urged supporters to wait for those.

"Our leader Sheikh Hasina has appealed to her party and supporters not to stage victory marches or engage in any kind of celebration until the final results are announced by the election commission," her spokesman Abul Kalam Azad told reporters.

A leader of Khaleda's Bangladesh Nationalist Party said on Tuesday its supporters were kept from voting in various parts of the country, and it planned to file a complaint.

"We have reports that BNP supporters were barred from coming to polls and also were driven away from polling stations in many places," BNP leader Rizvi Ahmed said in a news briefing.

PEACEFUL POLLS

The poll was generally peaceful, with both independent monitors and many voters saying they saw few glitches. Previous elections were marred by widespread accusations of vote-rigging.

"The election ended in a very peaceful environment and I never saw such a congenial atmosphere. The turnout was tremendous," Taleya Rehman, executive director of monitoring group Democracy Watch, told Reuters.

The military-backed interim government took control of Bangladesh in January 2007 amid widespread political violence, and canceled elections due that month.

The winner will have to tackle the endemic corruption, widespread poverty and chronic political and social unrest which prompted the military to intervene.