Sheikh Hasina Wajed, the winner of this week’s election in Bangladesh, on Wednesday offered the promise of power-sharing to her defeated rival in a bid to persuade her to accept the results of the poll.

The former prime minister previously held on murder and corruption charges won a landslide victory in the first election for seven years, crushing her arch-rival, ­Khaleda Zia. But on Wednesday Sheikh Hasina held out an olive branch of senior parliamentary and ministerial posts to Mrs Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) in spite of its rejection of the results.