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Bangladesh’s first woman Prime Minister Khaleda Zia is set to be released from house arrest after anti-government protests ousted her bitter rival Sheikh Hasina from power on Monday. President Mohammed Shahabuddin ordered the immediate release of Zia, chief of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), after discussing the formation of an interim government with politicians and the army. According to her doctors, Zia is suffering liver disease, diabetes and heart problems, She has largely remained away from politics over past many years.
Born on August 15, 1945, Khaleda Zia was wife of military leader and then-president of Bangladesh, Ziaur Rahman, who was assassinated in an attempted army coup in 1981. Three years later, Zia became head of her husband’s conservative BNP, vowing to deliver on his aim of “liberating Bangladesh from poverty and economic backwardness”.
Joining hands with Hasina, they lead a popular uprising that overthrew military ruler Hossain Mohammad Ershad from power in 1990. Bangladesh held what has hailed as its first free election the next year after their cooperation failed. Zia emerged victorious after having gained the support of Islamic political allies and went on to become Bangladesh’s first woman prime minister and only the second woman to lead a democratic government of a mainly Muslim nation after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto.
Khaleda replaced the presidential system with a parliamentary form of government, lifted restrictions on foreign investments and made primary education compulsory and free.
She lost to Hasina in the 1996 elections but returned to power five years later.
Khaleda’s government and its Islamic allies were widely blamed for hitting a 2004 rally Hasina was addressing with grenades. Hasina survived but over 20 people were killed and more than 500 were wounded. Years later her eldest son was tried in absentia and sentenced to life for the attack.
Khaleda’s second stint as prime minister ended in 2006 when an army-backed interim government took power amid political instability and the interim government jailed both Khaleda and Hasina on charges of corruption and abuse of power for about a year before they were both released ahead of a general election in 2008.
Although the BNP boycotted the 2008 election, the tense relations with Hasina led to the two being dubbed “the battling Begums”. Tension between their two parties has often led to strikes, violence and deaths slowing economic development for Bangladesh with a population of nearly 170 million.
In 2018, Khaleda, her eldest son and aides were convicted of stealing some $250,000 in foreign donations received by an orphanage trust set up when she was last prime minister. She was jailed but released in March 2020 on humanitarian grounds as her health deteriorated. She remained under house arrest ever since. She said these charges were part of a plot to keep her and her family out of politics.
