BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia to contest general election, says party leader
BNP Vice Chairman Abdul Awal Mintoo said the 79-year-old party chief is doing well and she will contest the election, the Daily Star newspaper reported.
'She will be elected from Feni because she is now in good health,' Mintoo told reporters after a views-exchange meeting organised by the Feni district administration.
On his discussions with Zia's son and acting BNP chairman Tarique Rahman, who is in London, Mintoo said that they believe the election will be held in the first week of February.
'I think, considering the current situation of the country, the election may be held even before February. Because there is a pending case in the Supreme Court regarding the caretaker government. If a caretaker government is introduced, the election must be held within 90 days,' he was quoted as saying by the paper.
Zia returned to Dhaka from London in May after four months of medical treatment. She went to London in January for advanced medical care and was admitted to The London Clinic.
Zia has long suffered from liver cirrhosis, kidney disease, heart problems, diabetes, and arthritis.
The BNP chairperson was lodged in the Old Dhaka Central Jail on February 8, 2018, after the Dhaka court sentenced her in the Zia Orphanage Trust corruption case.
During the COVID-19 outbreak, the then Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government temporarily released Zia from jail after 776 days through an executive order, suspending her sentence on March 25, 2020, with conditions that she would stay in her house and not leave the country.
On August 6 last year, after the ouster of the Hasina regime, Zia was freed by an order of President Mohammed Shahabuddin.
In March, Bangladesh's Supreme Court upheld a High Court ruling that acquitted Zia in a corruption case in which she was sentenced to seven years in jail by a lower court.
Zia now stands acquitted in both the Zia Orphanage Trust and Zia Charitable Trust cases, in which she had previously been convicted and sentenced.
She served as the prime minister of Bangladesh from March 1991 to March 1996, and again from June 2001 to October 2006.
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