Khaleda Zia: The Begum who came in from the cold

The story so far: On August 6, a day after Sheikh Hasina resigned as Prime Minister and left Bangladesh, Khaleda Zia, the ailing ex-Prime Minister of the South Asian country of 170 million was released on President Mohammed Shahabuddin’s orders. The 79-year-old chief of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has been under house arrest since March 25, 2020, serving a 17-year prison term in two graft cases since February 8, 2018.

Ms. Zia was released after a meeting held between President Mohammed Shahabuddin, military chiefs, political parties, representatives of civil society and leaders of the Anti-Discrimination Student Movement, reported Bangladeshi news outletThe Daily Star. The ex-PM has several health issues, including liver cirrhosis, arthritis, diabetes and heart issues.

In October 2023, the 17-doctor panel treating the BNP chief had claimed that she was at “high risk” of dying without urgent medical intervention abroad. However, the Hasina government had refused to permit her to leave the country. As per a conditional release sanctioned during a COVID-19 outbreak, Ms. Zia is not allowed to leave her residence in Dhaka’s Gulshan area.

With the Bangladesh parliament dissolved, the nation is headed for fresh elections to be held under a caretaker government, a mere six months after Ms. Hasina won the last one in a landslide.

Here’s a look at Ms. Hasina’s arch-rival Khaleda Zia and her political legacy.

1982: Joins BNP as a member

After the assassination of her husband and former military president General Ziaur Rahman in a military rebellion, Khaleda Zia entered active politics by joining the BNP and taking charge as vice-president, within a year.

1983-1990: Spearheads the anti-Ershad movement

Gen. Rahman was replaced by Gen. Hussain Muhammad Ershad, who ruled Bangladesh under martial law for eight years. Opposing military rule, Ms. Zia took to the streets along with her party members to mob the Secretriat building in Dhaka. Taking charge as BNP chief in 1984, Ms. Zia headed several rallies and protests against the Ershad regime, which had imposed a stringent curfew, and scrapped social schemes and secular principles from the Constitution.

Stitching a coalition with like-minded Islamic parties, Ms. Zia formed a ‘seven-party alliance.’ Allying with Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League (AL), which headed a 15-party alliance, and the five-party Left coalition, Ms. Zia demanded an end to military rule. She was detained several times by the police and even placed under house arrest throughout the military rule.

In 1986, when the Ershad regime announced elections, Ms. Zia demanded the formation of a caretaker government to hold ‘free and fair’ polls. However, as the military government did not accede, the BNP boycotted the polls while the AL participated in the elections and emerged as the primary Opposition. The newly-elected Parliament lasted only a year as all AL members resigned and Ms. Hasina demanded free elections under a caretaker government.

As the military once again elected Gen. Ershad as the President, Ms. Zia joined hands with Ms. Hasina to launch a nationwide protest demanding an end to military rule. In the face of public outcry, Gen. Ershad resigned in December 1990, passing the charge to acting President Shahabuddin Ahmed to conducting ‘free and fair’ elections.

1991: First term as Prime Minister

The elections held on February 27, 1991 elected a ‘neutral’ ‘Jatiya Sangsad’ (national parliament), awarding BNP a slim victory. Winning 141 of the 300 directly-elected parliamentary seats, Ms. Zia was sworn in as Bangladesh’s first woman Prime Minister on March 20, 1991.

Under her first term, a bipartisan law – the 12th amendment – was passed by the Parliament to establish a parliamentary system in Bangladesh. Under this law, a House of directly-elected representatives, a council of ministers headed by the Prime Minister accountable to the Jatiya Sangsad, a constitutional head of state (President) to be voted by the Jatiya Sangsad and an independent judiciary was established. Her government also passed laws to make primary education compulsory and establish a coast guard, and also introduced a free market economy.

However, her government received a jolt in 1994, when Ms. Hasina, along with many AL members, resigned from the Parliament, accusing the Zia government of widespread corruption and rigging of by-elections. Refusing to pass the charge to a caretaker government to hold polls, Ms. Zia proposed a non-partisan advisory council headed by the President to oversee elections. With the AL boycotting the 1996 polls, Ms. Zia was re-elected for a second time in an election which saw only a 21% voter turnout.

Amid growing demands for fresh elections, Ms. Zia’s government passed the thirteenth Amendment to the constitution, allowing the formation of a neutral caretaker government to allow peaceful transfer of power and provide a level playing field to all political parties during elections. After a short, twelve-day term, Ms. Zia resigned and handed over power to a caretaker government headed by former Chief Justice Mohammad Habibur Rahman.

1996-2001: First term as LoP

Bangladesh awarded Ms. Hasina the mandate in the June 1996 polls, with AL winning 146 of the 300 seats, followed by BNP, which won 116 seats, and the Jatiya National Party (JP), led by the then-incarcerated Mr. Ershad, which won 32 seats.

Stitching a four-party alliance with Islamic parties like Jamaat-i-Islami Bangladesh, Islami Oikya Jote and Gen. Ershad’s JP, the BNP launched an anti-corruption movement against the Sheikh Hasina government. Ahead of the 2001 elections, JP exited the four-party alliance; a splinter faction headed by Naziur Rahman Manju remained with BNP.

2001-2006: Third term as PM

In the 2001 elections, the BNP-led four-party alliance won a landslide victory, winning 215 seats. Ms. Zia’s term, however, was marred by rising Islamic militancy, unchecked corruption, abuse of power, and erosion of democracy within BNP. According to The Daily Star, Ms. Zia had “stacked her party leadership and cabinet posts with her sons, nephews and other relatives,” promoting widespread nepotism. With her two sons in government, she allowed more radical and criminal members in the alliance government to rule unchecked with minimum accountability, critics alleged.

Ms. Zia’s reported patronage of Siddique ul-Islam alias Bangla Bhai, who was pivotal in forming the militant outfit Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB), marred her term in 2005. On August 17, 2005, 469 near-simultaneous bomb blasts occurred in 63 locations across Bangladesh, killing two and injuring over a hundred.

Her aligning with the Jamaat-i-Islami, which had opposed Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan, also caused controvesy. Further, she has declared August 15 – the day when Mujibur Rahman and most of his immediate family members were killed in a military coup— as her birthdate, which has been considered an insult to the Awami League founder who has been named ‘Father of the Nation.’ She has also shown no documents backing this day as her date of birth and has been slapped with multiple cases for questioning Bangladesh’s independence history. She has also remained skeptical of the number of martyrs in the liberation war.

During her last term as PM, she implemented free education for girls, established the Ministry of Liberation War Affairs, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and conducted free examinations.

2006-2008: Stalemate over caretaker PM and arrest

Ahead of the 2006 polls, the BNP and AL failed to agree on a candidate to head the caretaker government. Ending the stalemate, President Iajuddin Ahmed declared himself as caretaker PM and announced elections to be held in January 2007. With the AL accusing the caretaker government of a bias towards the BNP government, Sheikh Hasina announced a boycott of the polls and Bangladesh was placed under a state of emergency.

The military-run government headed by then-Army Chief Gen. Moeen U. Ahmed initiated a ‘fight against corruption’ and arrested both Ms. Hasina and Ms. Zia for alleged bribery and corruption. After months of incarceration along with other members of the Zia family, Ms. Zia was released in September 2007. In the following elections held in December 2008, the BNP only managed to secure 29 seats – marking the start of the fall of BNP.

2009 onwards: Sheikh Hasina wins four consecutive terms

In 2009, Sheikh Hasina began her second term as Prime Minister with an absolute majority of 263 seats. She passed the fifteenth amendment which scrapped the thirteenth amendment, ending the constitutional need for transferring power to a ‘neutral caretaker government.’ This ensured her continuous wins in consecutive elections in 2014, 2019 and now 2024. Ms. Zia and BNP have boycotted all the above elections, insisting that a ‘neutral caretaker government’ was necessary for free elections.

In 2010, the Sheikh Hasina government cancelled the allotment of late Gen. Rahman’s house in Dhaka’s Cantonment area to his widow. Vacating the palatial Army bungalow, Ms. Zia retained her residence in the city’s Gulshan area.

Prior to the 2014 polls, Ms. Zia was first put under house arrest. Later in February 2018, Ms. Zia was sentenced to a five-year imprisonment term for embezzlement of funds meant for an orphanage trust. The term was then increased to ten years by the court. Later in October that year, she was also sentenced to seven years in jail in a case involving a charity fund named after her late husband. The BNP claimed that the cases were politically biased, but failed to gain public support to pressure the Sheikh Hasina government.

Due to her conviction, Ms. Zia has been barred from contesting polls, as the Constitution prohibits the participation of a convicted person sentenced to over two years in prison. In the wake of the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020, Ms. Zia was conditionally released from jail for six months, but told to remain at her Gulshan residence. Repeated requests by her doctors to transport her to facilities abroad had been rejected by the Sheikh Hasina government.

Her release amid the current political crisis in Bangladesh has raised hopes for the BNP to regain its political stature in the country. With several BNP members in talks with the military and students in forming a caretaker government, a fresh election without Sheikh Hasina’s influence may signify a turn of luck for Khaleda Zia, who still heads the BNP.