Representative image for voting.
Credit: iStock Photo
Dhaka: Nearly half of the voters in Bangladesh have not yet decided which party they will vote for in the general elections scheduled for early February, said a survey released here on Monday.
The number of people in indecision about whom they are going to vote has further increased, according to the survey conducted by the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD), a research wing of private BRAC University.
In October, 38 per cent of respondents said they had yet to make up their minds. That figure has now climbed to 48.5 per cent, the survey found, signalling growing uncertainty among the electorate as the election approaches.
BIGD fellow Syeda Selina Aziz presented the survey results, saying their study collected opinions from 5,489 people from various professions in both rural and urban areas and of them, 53 per cent were men and 47 per cent were women. Seventy-three per cent were from rural areas and 27 per cent from urban areas.
The interim government chief adviser, Muhammad Yunus, last week said the elections would be held in February. Later, the Election Commission announced that the polls would be held in the first week of that month.
Former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has emerged as the single largest party in Awami League’s absence after Yunus’ government disbanded its activities under an executive order.
A large offshoot of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD), which led the protests against then-premier Sheikh Hasina, formed the National Citizen Party (NCP) in February, apparently with Yunus’ blessings. The NCP is believed to have developed ties with the far-right Jamaat-e-Islami and other Islamist groups against the BNP.
Asked which party they intended to vote for, 12 per cent of respondents named the BNP, 10.4 per cent Jamaat-e-Islami, and 2.8 per cent the NCP.
Responding to a question whether Bangladesh was on the right political track, 42 per cent of respondents said “yes”, a figure down from 56 per cent in October.
According to the survey, about 70 per cent of respondents believe the upcoming election will be free, fair and impartial, while 15 per cent expressed doubt about its credibility.