Chairman Tarique Rahman

Mr. Rahman is a witness to, and a participant in, Bangladesh's independence struggle and its political rise and fall. During the Liberation War of 1971, when his father, Shaheed President Ziaur Rahman Bir Uttam, declared the independence of Bangladesh, he, his mother and his brother were arrested along with the family members of other freedom-fighter military officers. He was one of the youngest prisoners jailed for the independence of Bangladesh.

After completing his early schooling at BAF Shaheen College in Dhaka, he enrolled in the International Relations department of Dhaka University in the 1980s. At university he read the political thought of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Voltaire, Karl Marx and other exceptional thinkers. During the anti-Ershad movement he joined the street protests alongside his mother and, in 1988, joined the BNP as an ordinary member of the party's Gabtali upazila unit. Organising people from the grassroots, he contributed to the fall of the Ershad government. Before the 1991 election, he campaigned with his mother, Begum Khaleda Zia, in almost every district of the country.

In Bogra he initiated the democratic process of selecting leaders from the grassroots by secret ballot, and encouraged other district units to elect their leaders democratically as well. Before the 2001 election he set up an office in Dhaka to research good governance and local problems; through his efforts the BNP won an absolute victory in the 2001 election. Although he was the son of the Chairperson, he took no ministry or parliamentary seat and instead focused on empowering the party's grassroots. In 2002 he was nominated Senior Joint Secretary of the BNP. Organising a nationwide grassroots convention in 2005, he informed people about farmer subsidies, old-age allowances and stipends for female students, and personally answered at least 18,000 letters from those who registered.

After the unlawful seizure of power by the Awami League-backed military rulers in 2007, retaliatory measures were taken against Mr. Tarique Rahman. In an effort to force his mother, Begum Zia, to leave the country, he was arrested and tortured, and later had to travel abroad for advanced medical treatment.

He was elected Senior Vice-Chairman of the BNP in 2009 and gradually became involved in rebuilding the party. In 2018, when his mother, Begum Khaleda Zia, was imprisoned on false charges, he was nominated the party's Acting Chairperson. Since then he has been leading the pro-democracy movement against the autocratic Sheikh Hasina. After a long and painful 17 years of exile, Mr. Tarique Rahman made a historic homecoming. Following the passing of Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia, he assumed the office of Chairman of the BNP in accordance with the party's constitution.

In 1994, Tarique Rahman married Dr. Zubaida Rahman, daughter of the late Rear Admiral Mahbub Ali Khan, a former Chief of the Bangladesh Navy and a two-time minister. Zubaida Rahman is a cardiologist who studied at Dhaka Medical College. They have one daughter, Zaima Zarnaz Rahman.