Khaleda Zia: From a housewife to the corridors of power
KHALEDA Zia of Bangladesh reminded me strongly of former Philippine President Corazon Aquino because she was a simple housewife who was catapulted to the top position of the state after a tragedy. Both women lost their husbands to assassins’ bullets. Cory’s husband was killed by a convicted criminal taken out of death row on President Marcos’ order. President Ziaur Rahman of Bangladesh was assassinated during an army coup. Khaleda was his widow and became prime minister of one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. She stayed in office from 1991 to 1996 becoming the first woman in the country’s history and second in the Muslim world to head a democratic government as prime minister. She served again from 200l until 2006.
Khaleda spent 10 years in power and was elected to five separate parliamentary constituencies in the general elections of 1991, 1996 and 2001.
When Forbes magazine ranked her at number 29 in 2005 and number 33 in 2006 in its list of the hundred most powerful women in the world she had by then ruled over I50 million people in a country stretching over an area of 147 million sq. kilometers and getting better everyday.
In between her remarkable tenures and her struggle with Hasina Wajed, the other very strong woman in Bangladesh, I had an opportunity to see her and talk to her without having to visit Bangladesh much as I would have liked to do. She was right there not far from my house on the Makkah Road where her country’s embassy was located at the time.
So when I received a phone call from the embassy to meet with Khaleda Zia the same morning. I agreed at once and drove my car to the embassy where I met a great leader and a wonderful woman who had defied all odds and succeeded her husband to reach the highest post and rule a country of enormous problems and abject poverty that even now has no more that $ 800 per capita income. But in her three terms totaling 10 years she proved her worth and won.
When I went inside the building and up the stairs I could see that the country was struggling to make both ends meet but at the same time I admired the spirit and guts of the housewife who had accepted the challenge to rule the country.
There was a small and modest sitting room on the first floor where Khaleda sat on a sofa and I sat on a chair next to it facing her.
We talked about various matters concerning Bangladesh and the fate of ex-President Ershad. I was surprised that the government was planning to sue him for possessing a handgun. The gun was found in his house during a search operation following the coup.
She looked at me and asked me why I was surprised. I told her that the man had seized a country by force so what was so special about a handgun. During his tenure he could have seized heavy artillery if he wanted and order the air force to do anything he desired. She smiled broadly as if she agreed with me. But in any case Ershad was charged among other things with possessing a handgun.
But she heeded my advice to her to encourage the recruitment of Bangladeshis to serve in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. The advice was taken seriously and there are now at least one and a half million workers here in addition to hundreds of thousands in other Gulf countries. They are responsible for contributing generously to the economy of their country just as Indians and Pakistanis have done for their own countries during the past 20 to 30 years.
In her three tenures she achieved considerable progress in the field of education including the introduction of free and compulsory primary education; tuition for girls up to class ten; cash for female students and food for education program. She launched her remarkable tree plantation plan and started the Jamuna bridge construction. But her third term was plagued with rising militancy and spiraling corruption, so much so that she was compelled to quit.
