Dhaka : I never forgot to tend to and cultivate my roots, wrote Zaima Rahman in a recent Facebook post. It is to those roots she returned to this week along with her father, Tarique Rahman, the de facto chief of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) after 17 long years. In that post, she spoke fondly about her grandmother and former Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, referring to her as Dadu.
As people flooded Dhaka streets to welcome back Tarique Rahman, Khaleda Zia’s son, Zaima and her mother Zubaida headed to the house at 196 Gulshan Avenue on Thursday. It was for Tarique to bask in the limelight. But as images from their flight from London and then Dhaka airport went viral, Zaima Rahman made a quiet entry into Bangladesh politics.
A London-trained barrister, Zaima might as well turn out to be a new symbol of renewal for the BNP, introducing youth appeal to a party with a long history of corruption and scandal. In fact, Tarique Rahman and his Hawa Bhaban, an alternative power centre during the time the BNP-Jamaat-e-Islami ran a coalition government, were associated with corruption, terror plots and abuse of power.
Zaima Rahman is the only daughter of BNP Chairperson Tarique Rahman and the granddaughter of two of Bangladesh’s most prominent political figures, Khaleda Zia and late President Ziaur Rahman. Trained as a barrister in the United Kingdom, she has largely lived outside Bangladesh for the past 17 years. Unlike many members of Bangladesh’s political dynasties, Zaima has little experience in politics, having neither held a formal party position nor contested elections.
When I was around eleven, our high school team won a football tournament. My mother took me straight to Dadu’s office so that I could show her my medal and tell her about it myself. As I animatedly recounted my goalkeeping ‘heroics’, I was keenly aware of how attentive and proud she was. So much so that she would share that childhood story with others,” Zaima wrote. Zaima came to national attention in 2021 after Awami League minister Murad Hasan made derogatory remarks against her.
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