A leader who strengthened our struggle for democracy
The death of Khaleda Zia closes a definitive chapter in Bangladesh's history, one defined by the turbulent evolution of a young democracy. To understand the gravity of her passing on Tuesday, one must look beyond the polarised politics of recent years and recognise the extraordinary arc of a woman who seemed never destined to lead, yet went on to make enduring contributions to the nation's struggle for democracy.
Described early in her life as a "shy housewife" content in the shadow of her husband, President Ziaur Rahman, Khaleda began her transformation amid the blood and chaos of 1981. The assassination of her husband left the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) fractured and leaderless. Senior leaders doubted her political capability. Yet, when the party teetered on the brink of disintegration, she stepped into the void.
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It was on the streets of Dhaka that her shyness disappeared and her "uncompromising" persona emerged. Facing the might of HM Ershad's military regime, she earned her moniker not through shrewd negotiation, but through a steadfast refusal to legitimise a dictator. She was detained repeatedly, yet her obduracy became her greatest political asset. While her street agitation is the stuff of history, her legacy is cemented by two hallmarks that fundamentally altered Bangladesh's state structure: the restoration of the parliamentary system and the institutionalisation of the caretaker government.
Following the fall of the military regime in 1990—achieved through a rare and strategic alliance with her arch-rival Sheikh Hasina—Khaleda led the BNP to a stunning victory in 1991. As Bangladesh's first female prime minister, she presided over a seminal shift: the transition from a presidential system, long prone to autocratic abuse, back to a parliamentary form of government. It was a move intended to anchor democracy in the legislature, and it remains the bedrock of Bangladesh.
In 1996, Khaleda's administration navigated a volatile political impasse to ensure a fair transfer of power. She formed a parliament that proved short-lived and passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution amid violent protests. This amendment formally embedded the non-party caretaker government system into law. In a now-rare display of democratic adherence, she promptly dissolved parliament and resigned, submitting herself to the very neutral authority she had just empowered. Though she lost the subsequent election to Awami League, she retained a singular electoral distinction: she remains the only leader in the country's history to have won every parliamentary seat she ever contested.
Beyond that, her imprint reshaped the daily lives of millions. Guided by her finance minister, M Saifur Rahman, she introduced value-added tax (VAT) in 1991, a difficult reform that expanded the state's revenue base. But it was in the classroom where she altered the social fabric. Recognising that development was impossible without women, her government launched a nationwide stipend programme in 1994, making secondary education free for girls. This single policy has been among the most consequential of state initiatives in empowering rural women in our country.
Her legacy, however, is also marked by her bitter conflict with Sheikh Hasina. Violence and subsequent army-backed intervention in 2007 saw both leaders jailed, marking the beginning of a darker period in national politics.
The tragedy of Khaleda's final decade was profound. In January 2015, confined to her Gulshan office with sand-laden police trucks barricading the gates, she received news of the death of her younger son, Arafat Rahman. Cut off from the outside world, she was forced to grieve in isolation. The nadir came in 2018, when she was sentenced on corruption charges involving the Zia Orphanage Trust—charges her supporters consistently described as politically motivated. She became the sole inmate of the abandoned Old Dhaka Central Jail. For two years, Khaleda was forced to live in the solitude of a dilapidated colonial-era building, a period of profound loneliness that ravaged her health but failed to break her resolve.
After Muhammad Yunus assumed power as the interim leader, Khaleda was acquitted of all charges and convictions. This total exoneration was more than just a legal victory; it was a public vindication of her longstanding claim that her imprisonment had been a political construct of the Hasina regime.
History may come to view her final act—the years of silence and incarceration—as among her most politically significant. During the long and increasingly brutal rule of Hasina, Khaleda became a symbol of silent resistance. The wheel turned one last time in 2024 when a student-led uprising swept Hasina from power. Khaleda's rival fled the country and was later sentenced to death in absentia. Yet, in the aftermath of this dramatic reversal, Khaleda's most defining response was her calm. In her first public address after six years of silence, delivered from a hospital bed, she urged the nation to reject the "politics of vengeance". It was a final lesson in leadership: choosing to heal a fractured nation rather than settle scores.
With her passing, the baton formally passes to her son, Tarique Rahman, who returned from exile in London just days before her death. The reunion was brief, but his responsibility for the party in her absence is bound to be long and heavy.
Khaleda Zia leaves behind a Bangladesh vastly different from the one she inherited in 1981. She was not a groomed politician, but a survivor who stepped out of the domestic sphere to topple a dictator and help build the pillars of a parliamentary democracy. In a country often ruled by the gun, she proved that the most formidable weapon could be the resolve of a single, steadfast woman.
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