SHEIKH HASINA FLOATS INTO THE RECEPTION room of her official residence swathed in a luxurious silk sari, the personification of an iron fist in velvet glove. At 76 and silver-haired, Bangladesh's Prime Minister is a political phenomenon who has guided the rise of this nation of 170 million from rustic jute producer into the Asia Pacific's fastest-expanding economy over the past decade.
In office since 2009, after an earlier term from 1996 to 2001, she is the world's longest-serving female head of government and credited with subduing resurgent Islamists and a once meddlesome military. Having already won more elections than Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi, Hasina is determined to extend that run at the ballot box in January. "I am confident that my people are with me," she says in an interview with TIME in September. "They're my main strength."
Few rebuttals are as stark as the 19 assassination attempts that Hasina has weathered over the years. Recently, supporters of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have clashed with security forces, leading to hundreds of arrests, police vehicles and public buses set ablaze, and several people killed. The BNP has vowed to boycott the vote as it did in 2014 and 2018 unless Hasina hands power to a caretaker government to shepherd the elections.
Bangladesh has taken an authoritarian turn under Hasina's Awami League party. The previous two elections were criticized by the U.S., E.U., and others for significant irregularities, including stuffed ballot boxes and thousands of phantom voters. (She won 84% and 82% of the vote, respectively.) Today, Khaleda Zia, two-time former Premier and BNP leader, sits gravely ill under house arrest on dubious corruption charges. BNP workers have been hit by a staggering 4 million legal cases, while independent journalists and civil society complain of vindictive harassment.
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