By P.K.Balachandran
Colombo, August 7: In a classic case of poetic justice, persecuted Nobel Laureate Dr.Muhammad Yunus will replace his persecutor, Sheikh Hasina, as the Chief Executive of Bangladesh in an Interim Government to be set up following Hasina’s resignation from the Premiership and her flight from the country on Monday, the Bangladesh media reported.
Celebrated globally as a pioneer in the movement to extend cheap credit to poor rural women in Bangladesh, Dr.Yunus was scorned and sentenced to imprisonment on unsubstantiated charges of levying usurious interest on loans, swindling funds from organizations and being an American agent, on top of all that.
But the month-long student uprising in June-July, which led to Hasina’s fleeing the country, pitchforked Dr.Yunus to the top position in post-agitation Bangladesh.
The agitating students demanded that Dr. unus be made a Special Advisor to the Interim Government. But Bangladesh’s President Mohammad Shahabuddin went further and appointed Dr. Yunus as the Chief Executive of the Interim Government being established at the behest of the Army chief Gen.Waker-uz-Zaman.
Given the international outcry over Hasina’s draconian rule, a Bangladesh court had given Dr.Yunus bail and allowed him to go to Paris to attend the Olympics as a special invitee.
While in Paris, Dr. Yunus agreed to lead the Interim Government as its CEO, according to The Daily Star.
“When I was contacted on behalf of the students, I didn’t agree at first. I told them I have a lot of work to finish. But the students repeatedly requested me,” the source quoted Dr. Yunus as saying.
According to Dr. Yunus, one of the students told him: “Many people lost their lives in this movement and many students and common people were killed. Now Bangladesh has the opportunity to run the country in a proper way. And it is possible only if you take responsibility. If you don’t agree to take responsibility, it won’t be good for any of us. That’s why we’re asking you to take responsibility.”
Dr.Yunus said that he considered that these students had protested so much, they had to pay so much for it, he should also put his shoulders to the wheel.
“If the students can sacrifice so much, if the people of the country can sacrifice so much, then I also have some responsibility. Then I told the students that I can take the responsibility,” Dr. Yunus said.
He is expected to return to Bangladesh “as soon as possible.”
Contribution
Known as the “banker to the poor”, Dr. Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for helping lift millions from poverty by providing tiny loans of sums less than U$ 100 to the rural poor who are too impoverished to gain attention from traditional banks, Reuters said.
“His lending model has since inspired similar projects around the world, including developed countries like the United States where Yunus started a separate non-profit Grameen America,” Reuters pointed out.
As his success and global recognition grew, Dr. Yunus (currently 84 years old) flirted with a politics and attempted to form his own party in 2007.
But Sheikh Hasina saw Dr. Yunus as a credible challenger, with grassroots Bangladeshi as well as Western support. She felt threatened though he had promoted her in international forums, using his influence among Western elite.
Turning viciously against Dr.Yunus, Hasina accused him of “sucking the blood of the poor”. Her vilification campaign gained some credence because in neighbouring countries like India and Sri Lanka there were many instances of micro-credit companies slapping high interest rates on poor rural women and driving them further into debt.
But Dr. Yunus pointed out that the rates charged by Grameen Bank were far lower than the local norm in developing countries.
In 2011, Hasina removed Yunus from the chairmanship of Grameen Bank, saying that at 73, he had stayed on past the legal retirement age of 60. This created a dispute as to whether the Grameen Bank could be treated as a government bank.
But Hasina’s actions did not strike a chord among Grameen Bank’s clients. Thousands formed a human chain to protest his sacking.
In January 2024, Dr. Yunus was sentenced to six months in prison for violations of labour law. Additionally in June, he and 13 others were indicted by a Bangladesh court on charges of embezzlement of US$ 2 million from the workers’ welfare fund of a telecom company, he founded.
Although he was not actually put in prison in either case having got bail, Dr. Yunus faces more than 198 cases on graft and other charges, which he said were “very flimsy, made-up stories”.
His international network of friends stood up to defend him. In an open letter to Hasina in 2023, more than 170 influential world figures, including former US President Barack Obama, former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and over 100 Nobel laureates called on Hasina to halt the “continuous judicial harassment”.
The situation worsened when the World Bank cancelled a loan for a major bridge project over the river Padma over corruption concerns. Hasina accused Dr.Yunus of influencing the decision, which Yunus denied.
Given the mass sentiment against the US in Bangladesh at that time, Dr. Yunus was dubbed an American lackey.
But the situation changed after Sheikh Hasina ‘s credibility declined sharply in 2023 and 2024. An increasing number of people began to see America from a favourable angle as an ally against Hasina’s dictatorial tendencies.
Today, there is a general demand not just for Dr.Yunus’ rehabilitation but for his talent and experience in nation-building on sound lines as per international standards.
END
