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- Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has been chosen because the short-term head of the Bangladeshi authorities following longtime Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s ouster.
- Yunus, who based regional microfinance big Grameen Bank, will serve in a caretaker place till new elections are held.
- Yunus, 84, is a longtime foe of the Hasina authorities. He has been the goal of a number of state-led corruption investigations.
Bangladesh’s Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has been chosen to go the nation’s interim authorities after the nation’s longtime prime minister resigned and fled overseas within the face of violent unrest towards her rule.
Known because the “banker to the poorest of the poor” and a longtime critic of the ousted Sheikh Hasina, Yunus will act as a caretaker premier till new elections are held. The choice adopted a gathering late Tuesday that included scholar protest leaders, army chiefs, civil society members and enterprise leaders.
Hasina was pressured to flee on Monday after weeks of protests over a quota system for allocating authorities jobs was a broader problem to her 15-year rule, which was marked by a rising financial system however an more and more authoritarian streak.
BANGLADESH PM RESIGNS, LEAVES COUNTRY AFTER RESIDENCE IS STORMED BY PROTESTERS, ENDING 15-YEAR RULE
Hasina’s departure has plunged bangladesh right into a political disaster. The military has quickly taken management, however it’s unclear what its position could be in an interim authorities after the president dissolved Parliament on Tuesday to pave the way in which for elections.
Student leaders who organized the protests have wished Yunus, who’s at present in Paris for the Olympics as an adviser to its organizers, to steer an interim authorities.
He couldn’t instantly be reached for remark, however key scholar chief Nahid Islam asserted that Yunus agreed to step in throughout a dialogue with them. The 83-year-old is a widely known critic and political opponent of Hasina.
Yunus known as her resignation the nation’s “second liberation day.” She as soon as known as him a “bloodsucker.”
An economist and banker by career, Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for pioneering the usage of microcredit to assist impoverished folks, significantly girls. The Nobel Peace Prize committee credited Yunus and his Grameen Bank “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.”
FILE- Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus smiles as he arrives to seem earlier than a labor courtroom in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu, File)
Yunus based Grameen Bank 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 nations.
He bumped into bother with Hasina in 2008, when her administration launched a sequence of investigations into him. He had introduced he would kind a political occasion in 2007 when the nation was run by a military-backed authorities however didn’t observe by.
During the investigations, Hasina accused Yunus of utilizing pressure and different means to recuperate loans from poor rural girls as the pinnacle of Grameen Bank. Yunus denied the allegations.
Hasina’s authorities started reviewing the financial institution’s actions in 2011, and Yunus was fired as managing director for allegedly violating authorities retirement rules. He was placed on trial in 2013 on costs of receiving cash with out authorities permission, together with his Nobel Prize and royalties from a ebook.
He later confronted extra costs involving different firms he created, together with Grameen Telecom, which is a part of the nation’s largest cell phone firm, GrameenCellphone, 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 12 months, a particular decide’s courtroom in Bangladesh indicted Yunus and 13 others on costs over the $2 million embezzlement case. Yunus pleaded not responsible and is out on bail for now.
Yunus’ supporters say he has been focused due to his frosty relations with Hasina.
Yunus was born in 1940 in Chittagong, a seaport metropolis in Bangladesh. He obtained his PhD from Vanderbilt University within the United States and taught there briefly earlier than returning to Bangladesh.
In a 2004 interview with The Associated Press, Yunus stated he had a “eureka movement” to determine Grameen Bank when he met a poor lady weaving bamboo stools who was struggling pay her money owed.
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“I couldn’t understand how she could be so poor when she was making such beautiful things,” he recalled within the interview.
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