Support for AL govt growing

FE Team | Published: September 05, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

A recent survey conducted by a US organisation found that despite a continuing partisan divide on electoral issues, the ruling Awami League government gained support among majority of Bangladeshi respondents, reports BSS.
The poll results also indicated positive public feelings about Bangladesh's current economic position and optimism about both the respondents' and the country's economic futures.
The survey, conducted by International Republican Institute (IRI) in June this year, was published on Wednesday.
In the 18 months following Bangladesh's parliamentary elections on January 5, 2014, support for the ruling government and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reached 66 and 67 per cent respectively.
Bangladeshis were increasingly optimistic about the prospects for the country, with 62 per cent of respondents indicating they believed the country was headed in the right direction (up from 56 per cent in a September 2014 IRI survey).
Furthermore, 72 per cent rated overall economic conditions positively, 68 per cent felt security conditions were good in Bangladesh, and 64 per cent were positive regarding Bangladesh's political stability.
The effects of the January 2014 elections were evident in the persistence of a sharp division regarding new elections - respondents were almost equally divided when asked about when they would like the next national elections to occur.
Forty-three per cent of respondents in the survey indicated a desire for new elections to be held immediately, similar to an IRI survey conducted in September 2014, when 40 per cent stated they wanted immediate elections. Forty per cent wanted the current parliament to fulfill its term, down slightly from 45 per cent of respondents in September 2014.
With the decline of electoral violence and daily hartals, 24 per cent of Bangladeshis cited corruption as the most important problem facing the country, nearly 10 points higher than political instability (16 per cent) and security (15 per cent), which were cited as the second and third most important problems facing Bangladesh.
These are among the findings of the latest IRI survey in Bangladesh, based on face-to-face interviews conducted with a randomly selected sample of 2,550 voting aged adults from May 23 - June 10, 2015. Conducted in cooperation with international research firm Global Strategic Partners, the nationally representative sample was drawn from all 64 districts in the seven divisions of Bangladesh.