Dhaka, Nov 24, (dpa/GNA) – Bangladesh’s former prime minister, Khaleda Zia, is expected to contest next year’s national election, which will be held nearly a year and a half after her main rival, Sheikh Hasina, was ousted in a mass uprising.
Zia, who leads the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), will contest in three parliamentary seats, the party’s Secretary General, Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, announced in Dhaka on Monday.
The interim administration headed by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, which was installed after Hasina’s ouster, has scheduled the election for 300 parliamentary seats in the first half of February next year.
Alamgir said the BNP has finalized candidates for 237 of the seats. Zia’s son, Tarique Rahman, who lives in exile in London, will also run for a seat in Bangladesh’s parliament in Dhaka.
Candidates for the remaining seats will be announced later, he added.
The 80-year-old leader, who battled multiple health issues, has been largely absent from public life in recent years, due to her ailments and due to convictions in two graft cases from the previous Hasina regime.
Zia, who served as prime minister for two five-year terms from 1991-1996 and 2001-2006, was imprisoned for more than four years after being convicted in two graft cases in 2018 and sentenced to 17 years in jail.
She was released in 2022 on health grounds, under conditions that barred her from travelling abroad and engaging in political activities. Her party maintained that the charges were politically motivated.
Zia’s BNP and Hasina’s Awami League have alternated in power since 1991. However, Hasina cannot contest the upcoming polls, as the government imposed a ban on all activities of her Awami League party in May.
GNA