BNP marks the 82nd birthday of Begum Khaleda Zia on August 15, honouring the late BNP chief whose leadership helped shape the country's parliamentary democracy.
The Zia family's political story began in the turmoil of 1975, when Ziaur Rahman rose to power and founded the Bangladesh Nationalist Party in 1978. After his assassination in 1981, Khaleda Zia entered politics a world she had little experience in and took charge of BNP in 1984, just five years after its formation.
She quickly proved her critics wrong. Leading a seven-party alliance, she fought a sustained campaign against military ruler General H.M. Ershad, enduring repeated house arrests through the 1980s. Her decision to boycott the widely criticised 1986 election under Ershad's rule boosted her public standing and earned her the reputation of an "uncompromising leader."
After Ershad's fall in 1990, BNP won the 1991 election, making Khaleda Zia, then 35, Bangladesh's first woman prime minister. Her government shifted the country from a presidential to a parliamentary system, pushed market-oriented economic reforms and made primary education compulsory with particular emphasis on girls' enrolment in schools.
BNP returned to power in 1996 and again in 2001, with Khaleda Zia serving as prime minister until 2006. That year, she handed power to a caretaker administration, but political unrest led to a military-backed intervention known as "1/11." The interim government that followed imprisoned her, exiled her elder son Tarique Rahman to London and sent her younger son Arafat Rahman Koko abroad, where he died in 2015. Despite pressure to leave Bangladesh, she refused, insisting the country was her only home.
During the 15-year rule of Sheikh Hasina's Awami League government, Khaleda Zia faced further hardship and eviction from her residence and prolonged imprisonment actions rights groups called politically motivated. That government was eventually toppled on August 5, 2024, following mass protests known as the July Uprising, sparked by a student movement over job quotas. The upheaval paved the way for BNP's return to power in 2026 under Tarique Rahman's leadership.
Khaleda Zia did not live to see this moment fully unfold. She died on December 30, 2025, after a prolonged illness, just as many hoped her broad appeal could help unite the nation.
On her birth anniversary, Bangladesh remembers a leader who steered her party through military rule also house arrest and imprisonment without abandoning her political convictions a legacy now closely tied to the country's ongoing democratic journey.
