Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia is set to run in the upcoming elections expected in February, her influential political party announced on Monday.
The 80-year-old, a major figure in Bangladesh’s volatile political landscape, is being projected as a key contender, with her party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), considered a leading force in the polls.
Senior BNP leader Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir confirmed that Zia intends to contest elections from three different constituencies.
Zia, known for her steadfast political stance, has faced serious health issues in recent years after serving several prison terms under her long-standing rival Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in a popular uprising in August 2024.
Zia, who led Bangladesh three times, was jailed for corruption in 2018 under Hasina’s government, which also blocked her from travelling abroad for medical treatment. She was released last year, shortly after Hasina was forced from power.
Her son, Tarique Rahman, 59, who has been in Britain since 2008, will also run, Alamgir told reporters.
Rahman, known in Bangladesh as Tarique Zia, has lived in London since 2008, saying he fled politically-motivated persecution. He is yet to return to Bangladesh.
Since Hasina’s fall, Rahman has been acquitted of the most serious charge against him; a life sentence handed down in absentia for a 2004 grenade attack on a Hasina rally, which he always denied.
For decades, Bangladesh’s politics has been defined by the bitter rivalry between Zia and Hasina — a feud dubbed the “Battle of the Begums”, an honorific title in South Asia for a powerful woman.
The hatred traces back to the 1975 assassination of Hasina’s father, independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, along with most of her family, in a coup.
Three months later, Zia’s husband, Ziaur Rahman, then deputy army chief, effectively took control. He became president in 1977. He was himself assassinated in 1981.
Zia, then a 35-year-old mother of two, inherited the BNP leadership.
Initially dismissed as a political novice, Zia proved a formidable opponent, rallying against military dictator Hussain Muhammad Ershad, and later joining forces with Hasina to oust him in 1990.
The two women alternated in power for the next decade and a half.
Source: Dunya News