Bangladesh PM hopeful returns home
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 December 2025
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A senior leader of Bangladesh's biggest political group, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Tarique Rahman, has returned to the country after 17 years in exile. Mr Rahman is seen as the leading contender to become prime minister in this February's elections. Greeted by hundreds of thousands of people, Mr Rahman addressed a huge crowd and called on citizens from all ethnic and religious groups to join in creating a secular and inclusive nation.
Also in the programme: Pope Leo highlights the plight of the people of Gaza in a Christmas address; and a Christmas meeting between a bone marrow donor and a cancer survivor.
(Picture: Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) acting chairman Tarique Rahman addresses his supporters. Credit: REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.2 | Hello and welcome to News Hour. |
| 0:11.2 | It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service Studios in central London. |
| 0:14.9 | I'm Tim Franks. |
| 0:16.4 | A little bit later in the programme, I'll be joining my colleagues to try to recall the big and not so big news stories of 2025. In the end of year news hour quiz in the second half of the |
| 0:26.8 | programme, I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying I was a complete shambles. We're starting |
| 0:32.7 | though with two election stories today, one looking ahead to a vote, one holding a vote, both potentially |
| 0:38.8 | very significant. In a moment, we'll be heading to Somalia, but first Bangladesh, because |
| 0:44.8 | Tariq Rahman, the frontrunner to be the next prime minister, has returned to Bangladesh |
| 0:50.3 | after 17 years in exile ahead of the general election, scheduled for February. |
| 0:56.2 | Tariq Rahman was driven into the capital, Dhaka, in a big red bus draped with pictures of him |
| 1:01.6 | and his mother, the former Prime Minister Khaled Azir. Cheering crowds lined the streets. |
| 1:12.9 | And among the throng of excited supporters from Tariq Rahman's party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, |
| 1:18.7 | was this activist. |
| 1:24.5 | It's impossible to put into words the feeling of seeing him in person after a long 17 years. |
| 1:31.3 | We are overwhelmed with emotion. |
| 1:33.6 | You can see everyone has come out to the field with placards, banners and caps. |
| 1:38.3 | And then sounding similarly emotional, it was the term for Tariq Rahman himself. |
| 1:42.3 | He spoke mainly, of course, in Bengali, |
| 1:45.1 | but there was this moment where he addressed the crowd in English. |
| 1:49.2 | It was a crowd that appeared to number in its hundreds of thousands. |
| 1:53.2 | I have a plan for the people of my country, for my country. |
... |
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