The government has rejected calls by six international civil society oganisations for a fresh election in Bangladesh which the groups said was “neither genuine, nor competitive’.

In its reaction on Saturday, the foreign ministry said the joint statement from the organisations is ‘biased’, ‘unjustified’, and full of ‘false’ and ‘baseless’ allegations.

“The preposterous calls for a fresh election do not commensurate with the acclamation poured on the Government by the international community for conducting free, fair, credible and peaceful elections,” the ministry said in its statement.

Th organisations are the Asian Network for Free Elections, the World Alliance for Citizen Participation, the International Federation for Human Rights, the Asian Democracy Network, the Capital Punishment Justice Project, and the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network.

“The deliberate silencing of opposition voices and curbing of political dissent leading up to the polls were alarming,” they said and demanded release of the opposition figures on charges related to violent protests before the polls.

The foreign ministry said the Jan 7 elections were held in a “very free, fair, transparent, festive atmosphere and with the large participation of the people”.

A total of 1,534 candidates from 28 registered political parties and 436 independent candidates contested the elections amid the BNP’s boycott.

The six organisations questioned the around 42 percent voter turnout, which the foreign ministry said was as high as 70 percent in many rural constituencies, but the national average fell because of a lack of presence of voters in the city areas.

The organsations criticised the Election Commission and the law-enforcing agencies over reports of irregularities and violent clashes between supporters of the ruling party’s leaders.

The ministry responded to the criticism by saying that the Election Commission was “independent” and it conducted the polls “very effectively and efficiently”.

“Despite challenges due to the unleashing of violence by the BNP in the lead up to the election, the polling day unfolded with an unprecedented level of peace, marked by only a few isolated incidents at a few polling centers. Many international election observers and journalists, who actively reported on the elections from the field, attested to this truth.”

“The members of the law-enforcing agency responded to the incidents of violence occurred in the run up to the election with restraint, proportionality and in adherence to legal boundaries. There were no arrests on political ground.

“Those who hurled petrol bombs on people and vehicles, set people on fire, killed and injured people and disrupted public life to subvert the elections were arrested under specific allegations. These measures were deemed necessary to uphold the rule of law and protect the rights of all citizens.

“The joint statement is, therefore, misleading, one-sided and unacceptable. It has been issued with an ulterior motive to encourage anti-democratic and anti-election forces that made their ill attempts to thwart the elections.”