Bangladesh: Nobel winner Yunus to lead interim govt, says president office

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus will lead Bangladesh’s interim government that has been backed by the nation’s military, it was announced early on Wednesday by Joynal Abedin, press secretary of President Mohammed Shahabuddin. The announcement added that members of Yunus’ government would be finalised after consulting political parties of the country and various other stakeholders.

Yunus is currently in Paris and is expected to return home soon, according to reports in the Bangladesh media. He said Sheikh Hasina Wazed’s resignation as Bangladesh Prime Minister was the “second liberation day” of the nation.

Earlier, in a meeting late on Tuesday lasting over five hours, student leaders who spearheaded the violent protests that led to the ouster of Sheikh Hasina held discussions with President Shahabuddin, the country’s three military chiefs, leading industrialists and civil society heads, to officially arrive at a decision over Yunus leading the interim administration. The meeting was over a little after midnight.

MUHAMMAD YUNUS: ACCOLADES & ALLEGATIONS

Muhammad Yunus, 84, was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for founding the Grameen Bank and starting the microcredit and microfinance loan concepts, for entrepreneurs who are too poor to avail conventional bank loans. Yunus has served on the board of directors of the United Nations Foundation from 1998 to 2021, and from 2012 to 2018 was Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland.

Trouble for Yunus started in 2008, when the Sheikh Hasina government launched investigations against him after he announced the formation of a political party in 2007. Charges levelled against Yunus included the use of coercion to recover loans from rural women.

In 2013, Yunus faced allegations of accepting cash without government consent. These include the amount he received for winning the Nobel, royalty from a book he published and money he made from his company Grameen Telecom.

In 2023, several Grameen Telecom employees legally accused Yunus of depriving them of job benefits.

In 2024, a special court indicted Yunus with 13 others in an embezzlement case to the tune of $2 million. Yunus is currently out on bail and has denied all allegations.

Sheikh Hasina and Muhammad Yunus have been vehement critics of each other’s ideologies, and Hasina once called Yunus a “bloodsucker”.

BANGLA POLICE CHIEF SACKED

Meanwhile, following Sheikh Hasina’s escape to India after her resignation as Prime Minister on Monday, President Shahabuddin has terminated the service of the Bangladesh police chief, Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun.

Sheikh Hasina’s escape to India culminated violent students’ protests that erupted in Bangladesh over a controversial quota system which reserves 30 per cent jobs for families of freedom fighters who took part in the nation’s liberation war of 1971. The riots claimed more than 300 lives over the past three weeks, and the Army assumed control of Bangladesh after Sheikh Hasina fled to India.