Begum Khaleda Zia

This book is about Bangladesh’s first female prime minister, Begum Khaleda Zia, who served three terms in office and achieved enormous popularity. Her charisma inexorably emanates from her sense of dignity, integrity, uncompromising principles, and commitment to freedom, independence, and sovereignty of Bangladesh--a new and small country bordering the larger India, which is always up to its hegemonic designs. Begum Zia (and her husband, President Ziaur Rahman) were able to foreign conspiracies at bay. Begum Zia’s incredible success in government and overwhelming struggle for democracy, against the dictatorship of Ershad in the 1980s and the fascism of Hasina since 2009, have made her into a national political leader of true greatness. Khaleda Zia received little respite from her enemies while in office but was able to make great accomplishments for the country. Uncomfortable with her prominence and outspokenness, Hasina orchestrated, in collaboration with partisan prosecutors and judges, to send the aging and ailing former Prime Minister to jail terms in a solitary cell. Nevertheless, she remained greatly revered by dint of her devotion and dedication to her people and the nation and to her insurmountable sufferings at the hands of her enemies.