Key Bangladesh election returns old guard to power

What happened

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party, one of the South Asian nation’s two entrenched political factions, claimed a decisive victory this morning in Bangladesh’s first election since the 2024 student-led uprising that ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party, came in second.

Hasina’s Awami League, traditionally the BNP’s main rival, was barred from contesting Thursday’s election after its exiled leader was sentenced to death in November for her role in the deaths of 1,400 protesters.