Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has been chosen to head the Bangladesh’s interim government after the nation’s longtime prime minister resigned and fled abroad in the face of violent unrest against her rule.
Known as the “banker to the poorest of the poor” and a longtime critic of the ousted Sheikh Hasina, Yunus will act as a caretaker premier until new elections are held. The decision followed a meeting late Tuesday that included student protest leaders, military leaders, civil society members and business leaders.
Hasina was forced to flee on Monday after weeks of protests and her departure has plunged Bangladesh into a political crisis. The army has temporarily taken control, but it is unclear what its role would be in an interim government after the president dissolved parliament on Tuesday to pave the way for elections.
Student leaders who organised the protests had wanted Yunus, who is now in Paris for the Olympics as an adviser to its organisers, to lead an interim government.
He could not immediately be reached by the Associated Press for comment, but key student leader Nahid Islam said that Yunus agreed to step in during a discussion with them.
‘To poverty as Bill Gates is to computer software’
The 83-year-old is a well-known critic and political opponent of Hasina. Yunus called her resignation the country’s “second liberation day.” She once called him a “bloodsucker.” In January, Yunus was convicted of violating Bangladesh’s labour laws in a trial decried by his supporters as politically motivated.
Last year, more than 100 Nobel laureates signed an open letter calling for the charges to be suspended. Amnesty International said the case was “emblematic of the beleaguered state of human rights in Bangladesh, where the authorities have eroded freedoms and bulldozed critics into submission”.
Yunus was born in 1940 in Chattogram, a seaport city in Bangladesh. He received his PhD from Vanderbilt University in the United States and taught there briefly before returning to Bangladesh.
In a 2004 interview with The Associated Press, Yunus said he had a “eureka movement” to establish Grameen Bank when he met a poor woman weaving bamboo stools who was struggling pay her debts.
“I couldn’t understand how she could be so poor when she was making such beautiful things,” he recalled in the interview.
An economist and banker by profession, Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for pioneering the use of microcredit to help impoverished people, particularly women. He is credited with lifting millions of people out of poverty. The Nobel Peace Prize committee credited Yunus and his Grameen Bank “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.”
A Guardian profile of him written when he won the prize described him as “to poverty as Bill Gates is to computer software. Only that Yunus’s business exponentially flourishes in a business environment infinitely harsher than leafy Seattle.”
Yunus founded Grameen Bank in 1983 to provide small loans to entrepreneurs who would not normally qualify to receive them. The bank’s success in lifting people out of poverty led to similar microfinancing efforts in other countries.
He ran into trouble with Hasina in 2008, when her administration launched a series of investigations into him. In an interview earlier this year, Yunus wouldn’t be drawn on the reasons for Hasina’s enmity but it has been linked by others to his aborted attempt to launch a political party in 2007.
During the investigations, Hasina accused Yunus of using force and other means to recover loans from poor rural women as the head of Grameen Bank. Yunus denied the allegations.
Hasina’s government began reviewing the bank’s activities in 2011, and Yunus was fired as managing director for allegedly violating government retirement regulations. He was put on trial in 2013 on charges of receiving money without government permission, including his Nobel prize and royalties from a book.
He later faced more charges involving other companies he created, including Grameen Telecom, which is part of the country’s largest mobile phone company, GrameenPhone, a subsidiary of Norwegian telecom company Telenor.His supporters say the charges are all politically motivated.
Yunus told Indian media on Tuesday that “today should be about celebration”. He played down any fears over instability in Bangladesh and called the ridding of Hasina “a revolution”.
“We got rid of a very authoritarian government,” he told NDTV. “We are enjoying it, we are enjoying our freedom and a new era is opening for Bangladesh.”
With the Associated Press
