Dec. 30 (Bloomberg) — Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s political alliance was swept back to power in national elections, ending two years of military-backed emergency rule.

Hasina’s Awami League gained a clear parliamentary majority, winning 229 seats with results declared in 295 of 300 constituencies, Election Commissioner Muhammed Sohul Hussain said from the capital, Dhaka, citing preliminary results. The main rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party won 27.

Hasina urged supporters to “exercise utmost restraint” and wait until final results are announced later today to avoid clashes with the BNP, the English-language Daily Star newspaper reported, citing party official Abul Kalam Azad.

The Awami League, which campaigned on a platform of cutting food prices and combating terrorism, faces the challenge of raising living standards in the nation of more than 150 million people, where almost 40 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day.

About a third of Bangladesh, the world’s seventh most populous nation, floods during the annual monsoon, hampering development. A “smooth” transition between governments is needed for Bangladesh’s $72 billion economy to grow at the forecast rate of 6.5 percent in the year to June 2009, according to the Asian Development Bank.

Islamic Radicalization

A return to a civilian elected government is also essential to stop increasing Islamic radicalization in the Muslim-majority nation, according to the International Crisis Group.

India earlier this month asked the army-backed interim government to stop militants using Bangladeshi territory to stage attacks across the border.

Turnout among the 81 million registered voters was 70 percent, the Star newspaper reported on its Web site.

The win was larger than expected and it is crucial that the BNP, led by former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, respects the result in order to avoid the violence that has characterized Bangladeshi politics in recent years, said Rhoderick Chalmers of the International Crisis Group.

‘Clean Election’

“It will be very hard for the BNP to swallow the result, but it will be very hard to reject outright,” he said in a telephone interview from Dhaka. “Early indications were that it was a clean election. There wasn’t much possibility for rigging.”

Nazrul Islam Khan, joint secretary of the BNP, said the party would comment later today and was waiting for feedback from polling booths to determine whether there had been irregularities.

“There has been no official announcement by the caretaker government so far,” he said. “But if you look at the results and what we have heard so far, it shows that Awami League has emerged as the winner.”

Hasina will address the nation later today, said Fazlul Karim Salim of the Awami League.

Hasina is the daughter of former President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who was assassinated in 1975 during a military coup four years after he led a war of secession from Pakistan.

She led her father’s Awami League back to power in general elections in 1996. Hasina and Zia, who won the last national elections in 2001, have dominated the country’s politics for the past decade.

Critics in the interim government said that Zia and Hasina failed to tackle corruption and that rivalry between their parties destabilized the country.

Street fighting between their supporters left dozens of people dead as the parties campaigned for elections scheduled for January 2007.

Backed by the military, the interim government canceled the ballot, declared a state of emergency and arrested hundreds of politicians for alleged graft. Zia and Hasina, who were among those detained, say the corruption allegations were politically motivated.

Last Updated: December 30, 2008 01:54 EST