Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and renowned advocate for impoverished communities, has been appointed to lead Bangladesh’s interim government. This appointment follows the resignation and flight of Sheikh Hasina, the deposed prime minister, amid widespread unrest against her administration. Yunus, a vocal critic of Hasina, will serve as the caretaker prime minister until new elections are organized. The decision was reached in a meeting on Tuesday night, bringing together leaders from student protests, military officials, civil society representatives, and business figures.
The unrest that led to Hasina’s departure began with weeks of protests against a government job quota system. These protests evolved into a broader challenge to her 15-year rule, marked by economic growth but also increasingly authoritarian tendencies. Hasina’s departure has plunged Bangladesh into a political crisis, with the military temporarily assuming control. However, the military’s future role in the interim government remains uncertain after the president dissolved Parliament on Tuesday, preparing for elections. The student leaders behind the protests had called for Yunus, currently in Paris advising Olympic organizers, to lead the interim government. Yunus described Hasina’s resignation as the country’s “second liberation day.” Notably, Hasina once referred to him as a “bloodsucker.”
Yunus, an 83-year-old economist and banker, earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his groundbreaking work with microcredit. His Grameen Bank, which provides small loans to impoverished individuals, particularly women, has been recognized for fostering economic and social development from the grassroots level. Yunus founded Grameen Bank in 1983, offering small loans to entrepreneurs who were typically ineligible for traditional credit. The bank’s success in alleviating poverty inspired similar microfinance initiatives globally. However, his relationship with Sheikh Hasina soured in 2008 when her government launched investigations into him. This tension stemmed from Yunus’s announcement of plans to form a political party in 2007, during a period of military-backed rule, although he never pursued this initiative.
During these investigations, Hasina accused Yunus of using coercion and other methods to collect loans from poor rural women while he was at the helm of Grameen Bank. Yunus refuted these claims. In 2011, Hasina’s government began scrutinizing the bank’s operations, leading to Yunus’s dismissal as managing director on grounds of breaching retirement regulations. In 2013, he faced trial for allegedly accepting funds without government approval, including his Nobel Prize award and royalties from a book. Further complications arose with charges related to other ventures he founded, such as Grameen Telecom, which is part of Bangladesh’s largest mobile network, GrameenPhone, a subsidiary of the Norwegian telecom giant Telenor. In 2023, former Grameen Telecom employees filed a lawsuit accusing Yunus of misappropriating their job benefits, which he denied. Earlier this year, Yunus and 13 others were indicted by a special court in Bangladesh on charges related to a $2 million embezzlement case. Yunus has pleaded not guilty and is currently out on bail.
Supporters of Yunus argue that he has been targeted due to his strained relationship with Sheikh Hasina. Yunus was born in 1940 in Chittagong, a port city in Bangladesh. After earning his PhD from Vanderbilt University in the United States and briefly teaching there, he returned to Bangladesh. In a 2004 interview with The Associated Press, Yunus described a pivotal moment that led him to create Grameen Bank. He recounted meeting a poor woman who was weaving bamboo stools but struggling to repay her debts. This encounter, he said, sparked his “eureka moment” for founding the bank, as he was struck by the disparity between her apparent skill and her financial hardship.
