Dhaka: At 76-years-old, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is a political phenomenon who has guided the rise of this nation of 170 million from rustic jute producer into the Asia-Pacific’s fastest-expanding economy over the past decade, Time said in a cover story on the world’s longest-serving female head of govt.
In office since 2009, after an earlier term from 1996 to 2001, she has been credited with subduing both resurgent Islamists and a once meddlesome military, Time said.
Having already won more elections than late Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher or Indira Gandhi, Hasina is determined to extend that run at the ballot box in January.
“I am confident that my people are with me,” she says in an interview with Time in September. “They’re my main strength.”
Bangladesh has taken an authoritarian turn under Hasina’s Awami League party. The last two elections were condemned by the US, E.U. and others for significant irregularities, including stuffed ballot boxes and thousands of phantom voters.
She won 84 percent and 82 per cent of the vote, respectively.