Family man, prodigal son, next PM: Can Tarique Rahman unite Bangladesh?

Between ending a 17-year exile and likely becoming Bangladesh’s next Prime Minister, Tarique Rahman has seen quite the reversal in fortunes in the space of a couple of months. His Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) has swept the national elections — the first after the ouster of the Awami League’s Sheikh Hasina in 2024 — and is set to come back to power after around two decades. Soft-spoken and measured, 60-year-old Rahman has always been seen as the heir apparent to one of Bangladesh’s most influential political families. His father, Ziaur Rahman, was one of the key military figures in the liberation movement and the founder of the BNP. His mother, Khaleda Zia, took over the reins of the party as a bereaved wife. ALSO READ | Modi first to reach out to Rahman, but mending ties easier said than done ## Early rise As is always the case with dynasts, Rahman’s active political involvement began early. He joined the BNP in 1988 as a 23-year-old and founded the Ziaur Rahman Foundation the same year. This was supposedly an apolitical organisation, but soft-launched his political career. He gained some popularity during the 1991 election campaign, when he accompanied Zia across the country. Ahead of the 2001 election, he set up an office in Dhaka to study local issues and engage with civil society, contributing to the BNP-Jamaat alliance’s victory. Though he was the party chief’s son, Rahman did not assume public office and remained in the party — on paper at least. During this period, as senior joint secretary general of the BNP, he was infamously seen to be running a parallel government from Dhaka’s Hawa Bhaban. ## 17-year exile, and return After the end of the Zia-led government in 2006, Rahman came under the scanner of anti-corruption agencies. He was arrested on March 7, 2007 on corruption charges during the rule of the caretaker government. In September 2008, he was released on bail to seek medical treatment in London. His aides alleged that he was so badly tortured in jail that he had to be taken to the plane in a wheelchair. Rahman would not return for 17 years. He secured political asylum and lived in London’s Kingston area with his wife, Zubaida, and daughter, Zaima. While abroad, the BNP elected him its senior vice-chairman in 2009 and re-elected him in 2016. ALSO READ | With elections, Bangladesh has entered new political moment. Now, question is how power is exercised In 2018, Rahman became acting BNP chairman after Zia was jailed. During the Awami League’s tenure, he was sentenced in five cases in absentia and faced nearly a hundred cases, many of them pertaining to corruption and terror. Rahman has consistently denied the charges. The Hasina government also barred the media from publishing or broadcasting his statements. Courts have since cleared him of all charges, clearing the way for his return on December 25 last year. By this time, his mother had become seriously ill. The BNP chairperson died on December 30. Rahman formally took over the position on January 9, at a meeting of the BNP Standing Committee. He got less than two months for his transition from a bereaved son of a former prime minister to virtually bagging the top job himself. ## How Rahman operates Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir, a Professor of Economics at Dhaka University’s Development Studies Department, told The Indian Express: “I have interacted with him, and have found him to be an extremely good listener, and takes decisions after consulting with the party elders.” Rahman, he said, has huge respect for the senior party leaders in the Standing Committee. During the campaign, though, he was surrounded by advisers from the UK, who counselled him on political strategy. Rahman has also cultivated the image of a family man. He campaigned with his wife, a doctor and his daughter, a lawyer. On Friday afternoon, as the election results became clear, people gathered outside his office in the plush Dhaka neighbourhood of Gulshan, hoping to catch a glimpse of the country’s new leader. Mohd Kajol Islam, from Begura village, said: “I want to see my leader, ami onar darshan korte chai.” Rahman, meanwhile, attended Friday prayers at a nearby mosque before returning to the office. The political signal was clear. After all, this election saw the dramatic rise of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party. But Rahman has not forgotten the minorities either. In his last address before the polls, he said: “Even in the war to protect independence in 2024, the question of religious identity never arose. We believe that religion belongs to each individual, but the state belongs to all. People of every faith will practice their religion according to their beliefs. This is the norm of a modern civilised society. Ensuring peace and security for all citizens is the responsibility of the state. Religion belongs to each individual; the right to security belongs to all.” Shubhajit Roy, Diplomatic Editor at The Indian Express, has been a journalist for more than 25 years now. Roy joined The Indian Express in October 2003 and has been reporting on foreign affairs for more than 17 years now. Based in Delhi, he has also led the National government and political bureau at The Indian Express in Delhi — a team of reporters who cover the national government and politics for the newspaper. He has got the Ramnath Goenka Journalism award for Excellence in Journalism ‘2016. He got this award for his coverage of the Holey Bakery attack in Dhaka and its aftermath. He also got the IIMCAA Award for the Journalist of the Year, 2022, (Jury’s special mention) for his coverage of the fall of Kabul in August 2021 — he was one of the few Indian journalists in Kabul and the only mainstream newspaper to have covered the Taliban’s capture of power in mid-August, 2021. ... Read More