An alliance headed by Bangladesh's former prime minister Sheikh Hasina took a strong early lead in unofficial results from today's parliamentary polls, election officials said.
They said Ms Hasina's alliance had won 88 out of 106 seats so far in the 300-seat parliament, with 16 going to a group led by Begum Khaleda Zia, another former prime minister and rival for power, and two seats to candidates outside the two alliances.
The vote aimed to return Bangladesh, a country of more than 140 million people, to democracy after two years of emergency rule imposed by an army-backed government.
For the most part the election avoided the problems of the previous polls, which were marred by violence and accusations of vote-rigging.
"The election ended in a very peaceful environment and I never saw such a congenial atmosphere. The turnout was tremendous," Taleya Rehman, executive director of monitoring group Democracy Watch, told Reuters.
However, a leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, lagging badly in unofficial results, said its supporters were kept from voting in various parts of the country. He said the party planned to file a formal complaint.
A military-backed interim government took over in January 2007, following widespread street violence between supporters of rival parties, and cancelled elections due that month.
Whoever wins the election will have to tackle the endemic corruption, ailing economy and chronic political and social unrest which prompted the military to intervene.
Official results will not be available until later on Tuesday. Officials and analysts said it was unclear if the losers would accept the results or take their supporters back onto the streets to protest.
Rivals Ms Hasina and Ms Khaleda alternated in power for 15 years up to 2006, but critics say they failed to resolve Bangladesh's problems in a large part because of protests, strikes and street violence linked to their parties when out of office.
Bangladesh's neighbours worry an increasingly violent Islamist militant minority in an otherwise moderate nation could provide support and shelter for radicals in their own countries.
The leading election candidates pledged to crack down on violent extremists and made populist promises to contain prices and promote growth in a country where 45 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line.
Reuters