Bangladesh’s first female prime minister, Khaleda Zia, dies aged 80

• BNP says Khaleda Zia died after prolonged illness.
• Zia stayed in London for medical treatment in early 2025.
• The BNP is a frontrunner to win the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Khaleda Zia, who became Bangladesh’s first female prime minister in 1991 and went on to develop a bitter rivalry with Sheikh Hasina as they spent decades negotiating power, died on Tuesday after a long illness. It was 80.

The opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said he died after a prolonged illness. She had advanced cirrhosis of the liver, arthritis, diabetes and chest and heart problems, her doctors said.

Went to London for medical treatment in early 2025, stayed for four months before returning home.

Although Khaleda had been out of power since 2006 and had spent several years in prison or under house arrest, she and the center-right BNP continued to enjoy strong support.

The BNP is seen as the frontrunner to win the parliamentary elections scheduled to be held in February. Her son and acting party chairman Tarique Rahman, 60, returned to the country last week after nearly 17 years in self-imposed exile and is widely seen as a strong contender to become prime minister.

Since August 2024, following a student-led uprising that led to Hasina’s ouster, Bangladesh has been ruled by an interim government led by Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel peace laureate and microfinance pioneer.

In November, Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia for her deadly crackdown on student protests.

Known by her first name, Khaleda was described as shy and devoted to raising her two sons until her husband, military leader and then President Ziaur Rahman, was assassinated in an attempted coup in 1981.

Three years later she became head of the BNP, which her husband had founded, and vowed to fulfill its goal of “liberating Bangladesh from poverty and economic backwardness”.

He joined hands with Hasina, daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father and head of the Awami League party, to lead a popular uprising for democracy that toppled military ruler Hossain Mohammad Ershad in 1990.

Fighting stalks

However, their collaboration did not last long. Their intense rivalry would lead to the two being called “the fighting Begums” – a phrase using an Urdu honorific for prominent women.

Her supporters saw her as polite and traditional but quietly elegant, someone who chose her words carefully. But she was also seen as a bold, uncompromising leader when it came to standing up for her party and taking on her opponents.

Hasina, by contrast, was much more outspoken and assertive. Their contrasting personalities helped fuel the rivalry that dominated Bangladeshi politics for decades.

In 1991, Bangladesh held what were hailed as the first free elections. Khaleda won a surprise victory over Hasina, having won the support of Jamaat-e-Islami.

In doing so, Khaleda became Bangladesh’s first female prime minister and only the second woman to lead a democratic government of a predominantly Muslim nation after Benazir Bhutto, who was elected to lead Pakistan three years earlier.

Khaleda replaced the presidential system with a parliamentary one so that power rested with the prime minister. It also removed restrictions on foreign investment and made primary education compulsory and free.

He lost to Hasina in the 1996 general election, but returned five years later with a surprise victory.

Her second term was marred by the rise of militancy and allegations of corruption.

In 2004, a rally addressed by Hasina was hit by grenades. Hasina survived, but more than 20 people were killed and more than 500 injured. Khaleda’s government and its allies were widely blamed.

In 2018, after Hasina regained Bangladesh’s highest office, Rahman was tried in absentia and sentenced to life in prison for the attack. The BNP denounced the trial as politically motivated.

Reservation and freedom

Although Khaleda later crushed radical groups, her second term as prime minister ended in 2006 when a military-backed interim government took power amid political instability and street violence.

The interim government jailed both Khaleda and Hasina on charges of corruption and abuse of power for about a year before they were both released before the 2008 general election.

Khaleda never regained power. With the BNP boycotting the 2014 and 2024 elections, its bitter rivalry with Hasina continued to dominate Bangladeshi politics.

Tension between their two parties has often led to strikes, violence and deaths, hampering economic growth in Bangladesh, a poverty-stricken country of about 175 million people that is low-lying and prone to devastating floods.

In 2018, Khaleda, Rahman and her associates were convicted of stealing about $250,000 in foreign donations received from an orphanage trust set up when she was the last prime minister — charges she said were part of a conspiracy to keep her and her family out of politics.

She was jailed but moved to house arrest in March 2020 on humanitarian grounds as her health deteriorated.

Khaleda was released from house arrest in August 2024 after Hasina’s ouster.

In early 2025, Khaleda and Rahman were acquitted by the Supreme Court of Bangladesh in the corruption case that resulted in their prison terms in 2018. Rahman had been acquitted of the 2004 grenade attack on Hasina a month earlier.