Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus said on Wednesday, as he left Paris, that he was “looking forward” to taking the reins of an interim government in Bangladesh, which is expected to be sworn in on Thursday with the mission of leading “a democratic process” towards rapid elections.
The new government led by the 84-year-old economist is expected to be sworn in on Thursday “around 8 p.m.” local time, during a ceremony “presumably attended by around a hundred people,” announced the head of the army, General Waker-Uz-Zaman.
The officer said he was “certain” in a televised address to the nation that Muhammad Yunus would be “capable of leading a beautiful democratic process from which we will benefit.”
The latter, who launched “a vibrant appeal for calm” to his compatriots after violence which has left more than 400 dead since the beginning of July, boarded a flight from Paris to Dubai, where he will stop before arriving in Bangladesh.
“I ask you to refrain from any form of violence,” Yunus added in a statement, after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country on Monday and parliament was dissolved.
The Nobel Prize winner wrote in the British magazine on Wednesday The Economist that he would do everything to ensure that “free and fair elections are held in the coming months”, but that young people “must not be obsessed with settling scores, as too many of our previous governments have been”.
Tarique Rahman, the interim president of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the main opposition movement to Sheikh Hasina, also called for elections to be held “as soon as possible” in a video address from his London exile to a huge crowd in the capital Dhaka.
In a timely fashion, Muhammad Yunus’s return to his country was facilitated by his acquittal Wednesday in an appeal trial for labor violations. His first-instance conviction in January, the only one handed down against him in more than 100 criminal proceedings against him, was considered political by his defenders.
He then went abroad after being sentenced to six months in prison, while remaining free pending appeal.
Decisions of the President
The decision to “form an interim government” […] with Yunus as leader” was taken during a meeting between President Mohammed Shahabuddin, senior army officials and leaders of the Students Against Discrimination group, the main movement behind the protests that began in early July, the Bangladeshi presidency said on Wednesday.
The economist, known for having lifted millions of people out of poverty through his pioneering microfinance bank, had attracted the enduring enmity of Mr.me Hasina, who accused him of “sucking the blood” of the poor.
For Nahid Islam, the leader of the student collective who participated in the meeting with the head of state, Mr. Yunus will have the title of chief advisor.
President Shahabuddin dissolved parliament on Tuesday, as student protesters and the BNP had demanded. On Monday, he ordered the release of those arrested during the protests and political prisoners. Including Michael Chakma, an activist defending ethnic minorities who has been in a secret prison since 2019, his party, the United People’s Democratic Front, said on Wednesday.
Monday was the deadliest day since the protests began, with at least 122 people killed, while at least 10 more people were killed on Tuesday, bringing the total death toll to at least 432, according to an AFP tally based on police, government and medical sources.
This movement resulted in the departure of M.me Hasina, 76, was forced to flee by helicopter to an unknown location after “transiting” through New Delhi, according to a senior Indian official.
Returning to power in 2009, Sheikh Hasina won a fifth term in January in elections without any real opposition.
Bangladesh’s main police union, meanwhile, asked for “forgiveness” for the shooting of students in a statement released Tuesday.
Evictions in the security apparatus
The national police chief was dismissed by President Shahabuddin and the military has made several changes to its top brass, including demoting some deemed close to Mr.me Hasina.
After the announcement on Monday that an interim government would be formed, millions of Bangladeshis took to the streets of Dhaka, storming parliament, torching pro-government television stations and smashing statues of the ousted prime minister’s father, independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
The offices of the Awami League, M’s partyme Hasina, were set on fire and looted across the country. Shops and homes owned by Hindus — a group considered by some to be close to Mme Hasina — were also attacked, witnesses said.
Neighbouring India, the United States and the European Union have expressed concern over reports of attacks on minorities.
The protests began in early July after the reintroduction of a system reserving nearly a third of civil service jobs for descendants of veterans of the independence war. Hasina’s government had been accused by human rights groups of using the institutions to entrench its grip and stamp out dissent.
Former prime minister and opposition leader Khaleda Zia, 78, was released on Tuesday, according to her party. A major rival of Mme Hasina, the BNP leader, was sentenced to 17 years in prison for corruption in 2018.
Thomas Kean of the International Crisis Group think tank said the new authorities face a formidable challenge: “rebuilding democracy in Bangladesh, which has been seriously damaged in recent years.”