DHAKA: To her
supporters, Sheikh Hasina is Bangladesh's "mother of humanity" for
giving Rohingya refugees shelter, but to her detractors she's a creeping
autocrat who has jailed opponents and muzzled dissent. Hasina, the daughter of
Bangladesh's founder, won a historic fourth term as prime minister with a
landslide victory in Sunday's election that the opposition claimed was rigged.
The 71-year-old is lauded by supporters for overseeing a decade of impressive
economic growth in the impoverished South Asian nation that was more commonly
known for its frequent floods and cyclones.

Opponents,
however, accuse her of jailing arch-foe Khaleda Zia on politically motivated
charges, of orchestrating mass arrests, enforced disappearances and passing
draconian anti-press freedom laws to try to cling to power. Hasina was abroad
in August 1975 when a group of renegade military officers assassinated her
father, Bangladesh's first president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, his wife and three
sons. She started her political career as a hero of the people, returning from
exile in 1981 to take over as Awami League leader and begin a long struggle to
restore democracy in Bangladesh. Hasina joined forces with Zia's Bangladesh
Nationalist Party (BNP) to help oust military dictator Hussain Muhammad Ershad
in 1990 but the pair soon fell out and were branded the "Battling
Begums".

Economic growth

Their rivalry has
dominated Bangladeshi politics for the last 30 years. Hasina was first elected
prime minister in 1996 but she struggled to emerge from the shadow of her
father during her first term and lost the 2001 contest. The pair were then
imprisoned on corruption charges in 2007 by a military-backed government which
had taken power in a coup.

The charges were
dropped and they were freed to contest the December 2008 election, which Hasina
won by a landslide. She has been in power ever since, presiding over economic
expansion of more than six percent every year since 2009. GDP growth last year
was 7.86 percent and Hasina has promised to take that into double digits. Under
her watch, Bangladesh is on course to graduate from a least-developed country
to a middle-income nation.

Poverty has been
brought down to around 20 percent and nearly 90 percent of the country's 165
million people now have access to electricity. Her fans also praise her for
opening Bangladesh's doors to some one million Rohingya refugees fleeing a
military crackdown in western Myanmar. 
She has earned plaudits from Western nations for allowing the refugees
to stay in camps in Bangladesh's southeast, while her supporters insist she
should be given a Nobel Peace Prize.

Going after
Islamists

Hasina's fans
have lauded her for cracking down on Islamist extremists in the Muslim-majority
nation, after five homegrown terrorists stormed a Dhaka cafe, killing 22 people
-- including 18 foreigners -- in 2016. She also launched trials of the powerful
Islamist opposition over crimes committed during the 1971 independence war.
Five top Islamist leaders and a main opposition stalwart were executed.

Her opponents
branded the war crimes trials a farce, saying they were a politically motivated
exercise designed to silence dissent. Instead of healing the wounds of war, the
trials have triggered mass protests and deadly clashes. Hasina showed similar
resolve in holding the trial of her main opponent and two-time former premier
Zia, who was sentenced to 17 years in jail in two separate graft cases earlier
this year.

Analysts said the
jailing effectively ended Zia's political career and weakened the opposition
ahead of Sunday's parliamentary vote, the country's 11th since
independence.  They say Hasina's regime
has slid into authoritarianism since she pushed on with an uncontested general
election in 2014. "She has crushed the opposition and created a one-party
dominant political system in Bangladesh," says Ataur Rahman, a political
science professor at Dhaka University.

Hasina married
nuclear scientist MA Wazed Miah in 1968. They have two children, who are both
US citizens, including son Sajeeb Wajed, who is an advisor to her government.
Hasina ignored calls by opponents to let a neutral government oversee Sunday's
election, which extended her reign as Bangladesh's longest-serving leader after
a campaign marred by violence and arrests of opposition activists. - AFP