Polls open in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka Sunday for a parliamentary election boycotted by the main opposition party and shunned by international election observers.
The incumbent party, the Awami League, will go largely uncontested. Candidates for the Bangladesh Nationalist Party have refused to run in the election and the party's leader, Begum Khaleda Zia who lives here, have urged supporters not to vote.
The BNP says the ruling party's decision not to follow tradition and appoint a caretaker government to oversee the election process has turned the election into a farce.
The Awami League says the caretaker government system has failed in the past.
Weeks of violent crackdowns in which more than 100 people have been killed plus a string of fires at polling stations has put voters on alert and will likely deter a strong turnout.
But despite all this, Sunday's voting was relatively calm.
One minor incident involved a crude homemade bomb found in a p