Dhaka, Dec. 31 -- "Oh Allah, if only You had kept her alive a few more days, my Madam (Khaleda Zia) could have seen the election."

This was the lament of a female BNP activist, weeping inconsolably in front of Evercare Hospital in the capital's Basundhara on Tuesday morning.

She said, "Our politics ends today. Madam is gone; who will I talk to now?"

As the country remains gripped by the election frenzy, the activist expressed her yearning in a mournful tone upon hearing of the BNP chairperson and the nation's first female prime minister's demise.

Khaleda, the three-time premier, had been undergoing treatment at Evercare for 40 days. As news of her passing broke at 6am, party activists began to converge outside the hospital.

Grief was...