Elections in Bangladesh
Encyclopedia
Election
An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the...
and election results in Bangladesh
Politics of Bangladesh
Politics of Bangladesh takes place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the Prime Minister of Bangladesh is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the...
.
Bangladesh elects on national level a legislature
Legislature
A legislature is a kind of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend, and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. In addition to enacting laws, legislatures usually have exclusive authority to raise or lower taxes and adopt the budget and...
with one house or chamber. The unicameral Jatiyo Sangshad
Jatiyo Sangshad
Jatiya Sangsad or National Assembly is the national parliament of Bangladesh. The current parliament of Bangladesh contains 345 seats including 45 women reserved seats distributed on elected party position in the parliament, the occupants of which are called Members of Parliament or MPs...
, meaning national parliament, has 330 members of which 300 members are directly elected through a national election for a five year term in single-seat constituencies while 30 memberships are reserved for the women who are selected by the ruling party or coalition. The Prime Minister is the head of the government. The president who is the head of the state is elected by the National Parliament.
Bangladesh has an unofficial two-party system
Two-party system
A two-party system is a system where two major political parties dominate voting in nearly all elections at every level of government and, as a result, all or nearly all elected offices are members of one of the two major parties...
which has evolved over time since the election of 1991. It means that there are two dominant political parties
Political Parties
Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy is a book by sociologist Robert Michels, published in 1911 , and first introducing the concept of iron law of oligarchy...
or coalitions, with extreme difficulty for anybody to achieve electoral success under the banner of any other party in terms is single majority.
Latest national election
The general elections will be held on 29 December 2008 under the military-controlled interim government headed by Chief Adviser Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed. The state of emergency declared in early 2007 was lifted on 16 December. Many national and foreign electoral observation missions have been allowed to operate. The official Election Commission website contains elections-related information, but a far better source for news, views and other resources, such as interactive maps, is the New Age Election Portal (newagebd.com/election).