Time magazine rates Sheikh Hasina as one of top 12 female leaders

DHAKA, Aug 11 (BSS) - Internationally acclaimed Time magazine has named Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina as one of the world's 12 top female leaders it rated in a special edition.

"Sheikh Hasina, the 63-year-old leader of the left-of-center Awami League, has a history of surviving," the TIME Specials wrote referring to incidents when she escaped attempts on her life as well as political career.

It said Sheikh Hasina survived the August 15, 1975 putsch as happened to be abroad when "assassins killed 17 members of her family" including her father and Bangladesh's founder Bangabandhu
Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

"She later survived a grenade attack that killed more than 20 people, dodging the bullets that sprayed her car as she fled," the magazine wrote while it also recalled her return overcoming political debacles including election defeats.

"In January 2009 (December 2008 polls), the Awami League won 230 of 299 parliamentary seats, and the consummate survivor found herself Prime Minister - again," the magazine said on the August 5, 2011 issue naming her in the seventh position in the list of
12.

Newly elected Thai premier Yingluck Shinawatra, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Argentine President Cristina Fern ndez de Kirchner were the first three women named in the list.

The others included Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, Australian premier Julia Gillard, Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Iceland's premier Johanna Sigurdardottir, Costa Rican president Laura Chinchilla, Finland president Tarja Halonen, Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite and premier of Trininad and Tobago Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

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