The leader who stood her ground

Khaleda Zia will be remembered as the country's "uncompromising leader," a phrase that may sound inflated to a generation raised on slogans and selectively edited political memory. Yet the reputation did not arise from rhetoric. It was forged through a series of decisions in which she refused to bend—frequently at great personal and political cost.

Her rise to prominence was anything but inevitable. In 1981, Sheikh Hasina returned from exile to assume leadership of the Awami League. That same year, Khaleda's husband, President Ziaur Rahman, was assassinated, and Bangladesh entered another period of military rule under HM Ershad. The country's major parties, including the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), aligned in opposition, demanding a return to democracy.

When Ershad announced elections in 1986, opposition parties initially agreed to boycott what they viewed as a staged exercise in legitimising authoritarianism. At the last moment, however, the Awami League and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami reversed course and chose to participate.

Khaleda, then new to political leadership and lacking institutional strength, refused to follow suit. Participation could have brought access, resources, and immediate relevance. Instead, she chose a harder path. By boycotting the election, she positioned herself as a leader unwilling to exchange legitimacy for proximity to power. It was the first moment when her public image began to crystallise—not as a tactician, but as a dissenter.

When democracy was restored in 1991, it was Khaleda who emerged victorious at the polls, overtaking rivals who had once seemed politically dominant. Her premiership was not without miscalculation. In 1996, after completing her term, she presided over an election conducted under her own party's government, a move that triggered widespread protests and eroded public trust.

What followed distinguished her from many regional counterparts. She did not deploy force to suppress dissent or attempt to govern through procedural stubbornness. Instead, she stepped aside, allowing a caretaker government to oversee new elections. In a political culture where reversals are often framed as existential defeats, her withdrawal was a rare acknowledgement that authority depends on consent.

Her most defining refusal came nearly two decades later. Ahead of the 2014 election, the Awami League government abolished the caretaker system amid growing questions about its legitimacy. Khaleda was reportedly offered a share of power if the BNP agreed to participate. She declined. Her position remained unchanged: no election without a neutral framework. Ministries, influence, and political survival were all placed on the table—and left untouched.

The BNP boycotted the vote. The election proceeded without meaningful opposition. Afterwards, Khaleda offered a line that echoed for years: "We don't have to do anything to them. They will rot on their own."

The cost of her defiance became unmistakable in 2018, when she was convicted in the Zia Orphanage Trust case and imprisoned in the long-abandoned Dhaka Central Jail. For months, she was the facility's sole inmate, living alone in the vast compound built for thousands. Political compromise could have altered those conditions. None was pursued.

Over the following years, her party endured sustained pressure—arrests, legal cases, and systematic exclusion from electoral competition. Many analysts predicted its disappearance. Instead, the BNP's identity hardened around the principle she had modelled: refusal as resistance.

She was not spared moments of private anguish. In 2010, she was forcibly evicted from her cantonment residence. In tears, she appealed only to divine justice. Fourteen years later, she was invited back to the same cantonment with formal honour for Armed Forces Day receptions, a quiet reversal that carried its own symbolism.

In her twilight years, age and illness limited her public presence. She could not return to politics with the force she once commanded. In a political landscape defined by accommodation and survival, Khaleda chose grit. Her legacy is not defined by how long she held power, but by how fiercely she refused to barter principle for convenience.

Again and again, she selected the harder road—not because it guaranteed victory, but because it preserved meaning. Leadership, in her case, was measured less by the power she held than by the pressures she refused to yield to.

She stood her ground.