DHAKA, Dec 28: Bangladesh holds a parliamentary election on Monday that may be its most transparent one. The vote will take the country back to democracy after two years of emergency rule by an army-backed interim government.

Hopes are high that polling for the country’s ninth parliament will be credible and put in place a stable civilian government that can attract much-needed aid and investment to the impoverished country of more than 140 million.

More than 81 million people are eligible to vote in the country’s first election since 2001. But with 32 per cent of them first-time voters commentators say the result could be close, with a hung parliament a strong possibility.

After just 16 days of frenetic campaigning, Sheikh Hasina Wajed of the Awami League and her bitter rival Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party made televised addresses to the nation.The women, who were jailed on corruption charges by the caretaker regime but then released to contest the elections, sought last minute votes by expressing remorse over their past records.

“I know you are aware of our mistakes,” Ms Zia said in her speech. “I ask for your forgiveness. I can assure you that we will take lessons from the past. I am human, mistakes get made.”

Ms Wajed meanwhile said she would end hunger and poverty in the grindingly poor country of 144 million people, promising to learn not only from mistakes made by her rivals but from her own errors.

“I urge the younger voters to bring us to power so we can build a country free of hunger and poverty. We want to steer the country to peace and prosperity,” she said.

Across the densely populated country, an unprecedented security operation is under way to curb election fraud and attacks by extremists during voting. Some 600,000 police officers have been patrolling 35,000 polling booths, and 50,000 troops are present on city and town streets.

Police have captured two dozen militants and seized explosives, grenades and bombs, but campaigning has been free of the large-scale violence seen in the past.—Agencies