Bangladesh’s first woman Prime Minister Khaleda Zia dies at 80

Khaleda Zia, Bangladesh’s first woman Prime Minister and a towering figure in the country’s politics, died on December 30 after a prolonged illness, her party said. She was 80.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said doctors declared her dead around 6 am at Evercare Hospital, where she had been undergoing treatment since November 23. She had been placed on ventilator support on December 11, and her condition had been described by her personal physician as “extremely critical” two days earlier.

According to her doctors, Zia suffered from multiple age-related ailments, including advanced liver cirrhosis, diabetes, arthritis, and complications affecting her heart and chest. The BNP said her condition worsened late Monday night. A special aircraft from Qatar had been kept on standby to fly her to London for further treatment, but a medical board did not clear her transfer from hospital to the airport.

Her death comes weeks ahead of national elections scheduled for February. On Monday, nomination papers were filed on her behalf for the Bogura-7 constituency. Her son, Tarique Rahman, who returned to Dhaka last week after 17 years in exile, is widely seen as a frontrunner and will contest from Dhaka-17 and Bogura-6. The latter seat, once considered a Zia stronghold, was won by an Awami League leader in 2023. Rahman visited his mother at Evercare Hospital on Sunday and spent more than two hours with her.

Zia served two terms as Prime Minister, from 1991 to 1996 and again from 2001 to 2006. She was the first woman to hold the office in Bangladesh and the second woman, after Benazir Bhutto, to lead a democratically elected government in a Muslim-majority country.

She was married to Ziaur Rahman, Bangladesh’s sixth President and a key figure in the 1971 Liberation War, who founded the BNP in 1977 and was assassinated in May 1981. Zia became BNP chairperson in 1984 and led sustained movements against the military-backed rule of H. M. Ershad, who seized power in 1982. During his nearly nine-year rule, she was detained at least seven times.

Ershad resigned in 1990 amid mass protests, clearing the way for elections the following year that brought Zia to power and marked a milestone in the country’s political history. She briefly returned to office in 1996 but resigned within a month amid strikes and protests, before leading a four-party alliance that regained power in 2001. She stepped down in 2006 and was arrested on corruption charges the following year.

As Prime Minister, Zia’s administrations placed strong emphasis on education, rolling out free and compulsory primary schooling, extending free education for girls up to Class 10, providing stipends for girl students, and implementing food-for-education programmes. Her government also raised the upper age limit for entry into government service from 27 to 30 years.

Tributes poured in from across the political spectrum as Bangladesh mourned a leader who shaped its post-independence politics for more than three decades.