Who is Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate set to lead Bangladesh’s interim government?

PTC News Desk: Who is Muhammad Yunus? Bangladesh’s long-serving prime minister resigned and fled the country in the face of a widespread rebellion against her leadership, and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus was appointed to lead the country’s transitional administration.

Yunus, a longtime opponent of the ousted Sheikh Hasina and known as the ‘banker to the poorest of the poor,’ would serve as interim prime minister until fresh elections are conducted. The choice was made after a late-Tuesday meeting with representatives from industry, public society, military leadership, and student protest organisers.

After weeks of protests against a government job quota system developed into a larger threat to Hasina’s 15-year rule—characterised by a growing economy but an increasingly authoritarian streak—she was forced to leave on Monday.

With Hasina’s exit, Bangladesh is currently experiencing a political crisis. Although the army has temporarily assumed power, it is unclear what function it would serve in an interim administration following the president’s Tuesday dissolution of Parliament to allow for elections.

Yunus, who is now in Paris for the Olympics serving as an advisor to the protest organisers, was the candidate that the student leaders wanted to lead an interim administration.

Although important student leader Nahid Islam said that Yunus promised to intervene during a conversation with them, he could not be reached for comment at this time. The 83-year-old is a well-known opponent of Hasina’s on the political scene.

Her resignation was referred to by Yunus as the nation’s ‘second liberation day.’ He was dubbed a ‘bloodsucker’ by her once. Yunus, a banker and economist by trade, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for developing the first system of microcredit to aid the underprivileged, especially women. Yunus and his Grameen Bank were recognised by the Nobel Peace Prize committee ‘for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.’

In order to give small loans to business owners who would not typically be eligible for them, Yunus launched Grameen Bank in 1983. Other nations began to implement comparable microfinance programmes as a result of the bank’s success in rescuing individuals from poverty.

When Hasina’s administration opened several investigations into him in 2008, he got into difficulties with her. When the nation was ruled by a government with military support in 2007, he had declared he would create a political party, but he never followed through.

As the head of Grameen Bank, Hasina accused Yunus during the investigations of utilising coercion and other tactics to retrieve debts from low-income rural women. Yunus refuted the claims.

2011 saw the start of the bank’s review by Hasina’s government, and Yunus lost his position as managing director when it was claimed he had broken government retirement rules. 2013 saw him go on trial for allegedly collecting funds without authorisation from the government, including revenues from a book and his Nobel Prize.

Subsequently, he was charged with further offenses pertaining to other businesses he founded, such as Grameen Telecom, a division of the biggest mobile phone provider in the nation, GrameenPhone, a division of the massive Norwegian telecom company Telenor. A lawsuit was launched against Yunus in 2023 by a few former employees of Grameen Telecom, who claimed that he had embezzled their benefits. He refuted the charges.

Yunus and thirteen other people were indicted earlier this year by a special judge’s court in Bangladesh on the $2 million embezzlement case. Yunus entered a not guilty plea and is currently free on bond.

Also Read: Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus to head Bangladesh’s interim government supported by the military

Supporters of Yunus claim that he has been singled out because of his chilly relationship with Hasina. Bangladesh’s maritime city of Chittagong is where Yunus was born in 1940. After earning his PhD at Vanderbilt University in the US, he briefly taught there before going back to Bangladesh.

In an interview with The Associated Press from 2004, Yunus revealed that he had a “eureka movement” to create Grameen Bank after witnessing a suffering debt-ridden poor woman crafting bamboo stools. He remarked in the interview, “I couldn’t understand how she could be so poor when she was making such beautiful things.”