Dhaka/Calcutta, Dec. 30: Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League-led combine has stormed to power in Bangladesh, wiping out the opposition from vast swathes of the country in a victory that analysts say is reminiscent of her father Mujibur Rahman’s triumph in 1970.

While that victory led to the break-up of Pakistan, war and the birth of Bangladesh, the stunning Hasina cyclone today gives her the power to craft a new history for one of the poorest countries on the face of the earth, and prove that its culture overcomes religious fundamentalism.

If the great victory for the grand alliance led by the Awami League is its hugest success, the defeat of fanatical forces that were gnawing at Bangladesh’s polity from within is a victory for the world: the Jamaat-e-Islami has been reduced to a shadow of itself, winning only two seats.

Its alliance with Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party has also contributed in large measure to pull down the four-party front.

The Awami League alone has won 231 seats, a figure that gives Hasina not only absolute majority but also the numbers required to rewrite the Constitution, if necessary. The alliance could garner as many as 263 of the 299 seats to which elections were held.

“I expect to form the government in seven to 10 days,” Sheikh Hasina, flashing the victory sign, said shortly after the trends left little doubt this afternoon. “I appeal to all my supporters to be calm and not be provocative. We have a great responsibility on our shoulders now.”

Hasina won all three seats she contested. Two-term former Prime Minister Khaleda and former dictator H.M. Ershad also clinched their three seats.

The BNP’s Khaleda, shocked that memories of her five-year rule should be so bitter that they provoked such resentment even after two years of emergency rule, alleged that the elections may have been rigged in about 70 seats. But with so many international observers certifying that this is one of the cleanest elections in Bangladesh, the allegations will carry little credibility.

That may still, however, not deter her supporters from stoking violence after the army is back in the barracks.

Ershad, who is an alliance partner of the Awami League, put on a brave face and said he was happy with the results. His party is set to win about 27 seats — the same as the BNP — but there was little doubt that Ershad had been eyeing to be kingmaker in the event of a hung Parliament and was even suspected to be angling to be President. Hasina has scored a victory here that is not only against her rival but rises above her allies.

A sense of what was about to happen was hinted at in the high voter turnout — nearly 80 per cent — of whom a third were first-timers. It is this vote that has largely gone the Awami League’s way, a table-thumping statement from Bangladesh’s youth that they are fed up of the corruption, violence and politics-in-the-name-of-religion that marked five years of Khaleda’s regime.

For India, Hasina’s victory will be a welcome change from the Islamist fundamentalist combine that marked ties under the Khaleda regime. But all too often, Indian analysts draw the facile connection that Hasina will be far more pro-Delhi because of the Awami League’s historical links.

India termed Hasina’s victory “historic” and a “landmark in democratic politics in South Asia”. “The people of Bangladesh have spoken with one voice to reiterate their faith in the democratic process and their desire for development and progress,” India said.

In the final analysis, the Awami League comes to power not because India wanted or did not want it but because it is the Bangladeshi voter who decided to give peace a chance through the clearest mandate in the country’s cleanest election.