Ruling party in Bangladesh in the lead – elections overshadowed by violence The UN is bankrupt and has to close its headquarters in Geneva – because the US also does not pay

In Bangladesh, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s party clearly won the parliamentary elections, which were boycotted by the main opposition party, according to partial results. According to initial results, Hasina’s Awami League party has won more than 50 percent of the 300 seats in parliament, a representative of the election commission said on Monday evening. In 208 constituencies for which results were available, it managed to win 152 seats.

Sunday’s vote was marred by several violent incidents. According to the electoral commission, only about 40 percent of the approximately 120 million eligible voters participated.

The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) had called on people not to vote. Both the BNP and human rights groups accuse the increasingly autocratic Prime Minister Hasina of targeting the political opposition and having thousands of critics arrested. If the 76-year-old head of government remains as expected, it would be her fourth term in a row and her fifth term in total.

The poor, predominantly Muslim country has experienced an economic boom since 2009 during Hasina’s rule, with average incomes rising significantly. Recently, however, high inflation has caused problems for many people. Hasina is the daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was murdered along with his family in a military coup in 1975. She survived because she was in Germany at the time. (sda/dpa)