The microfinance pioneer has been tapped to guide an interim authorities after the ouster of PM Sheikh Hasina.
Bangladesh’s Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus will head the nation’s interim authorities after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stepped down and fled the nation amid a mass rebellion towards her rule led largely by college students.
The announcement early on Wednesday got here from Joynal Abedin, the press secretary of President Mohammed Shahabuddin.
Abedin additionally mentioned the opposite members of the Yunus-led authorities can be determined quickly after dialogue with political events and different stakeholders.
The leaders of the scholar protests, the chiefs of the nation’s three divisions of the army, and civil society members, in addition to some enterprise leaders, held a gathering with the president for greater than 5 hours late on Tuesday to resolve on the pinnacle of the interim administration.
The scholars had earlier proposed Yunus and mentioned the 83-year-old microfinance pioneer had agreed. He’s anticipated to return to the nation from Paris quickly, native media reported.
Following the choice, scholar leaders left the president’s official home shortly after midnight, happy and welcoming the choice.
Nahid Islam, a frontrunner of the scholar group, known as the talks “fruitful” and mentioned Shahabuddin had agreed that the interim authorities “shall be shaped throughout the shortest time” doable.
Shahabuddin additionally sacked the nationwide police chief within the wake of lethal protests that sparked Hasina’s departure and named a alternative, his workplace mentioned.
Longtime Hasina critic
Yunus is a well known critic and political opponent of Hasina. He known as her resignation the nation’s “second liberation day”. She had as soon as known as him a “bloodsucker”.
An economist and banker by occupation, Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for pioneering using microcredit to assist impoverished folks, significantly ladies.
The Nobel Peace Prize committee credited Yunus and his Grameen Financial institution “for his or her efforts to create financial and social improvement from under”.
Yunus based Grameen Financial institution in 1983 to offer small loans to entrepreneurs who wouldn’t usually qualify to obtain them. The financial institution’s success in lifting folks out of poverty led to related microfinancing efforts in different international locations.
He bumped into hassle with Hasina in 2008, when her administration launched a collection of investigations into him. He had introduced he would kind a political social gathering in 2007 when the nation was run by a military-backed authorities, however didn’t observe by way of.
In the course of the investigations, Hasina accused Yunus of utilizing pressure and different means to get better loans from poor rural ladies as the pinnacle of Grameen Financial institution. Yunus denied the allegations.
He was placed on trial in 2013 on fees of receiving cash with out authorities permission, together with his Nobel Prize and royalties from a e-book. He later confronted extra fees involving different corporations he created, together with Grameen Telecom, which is a part of the nation’s largest cell phone firm, Grameenphone, a subsidiary of Norwegian telecom big Telenor.
In 2023, some former Grameen Telecom staff filed a case towards Yunus accusing him of siphoning off their job advantages. He denied the accusations.
Earlier this yr, a particular decide’s court docket in Bangladesh indicted Yunus and 13 others on fees over the $2m embezzlement case. Yunus pleaded not responsible and is out on bail for now.
Yunus’s supporters say he has been focused due to his frosty relations with Hasina.
