DHAKA: Bangladesh is set to get a new, interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus on Thursday, after weeks of tumultuous student protests forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to resign and flee to India.
Yunus, 84, Bangladesh’s only Nobel laureate and a harsh critic of Hasina, was recommended for the job by the student protesters who led the campaign against Hasina.
He was expected to be sworn in as chief adviser along with a team of advisers later on Thursday in an interim government which the army chief said may include 15 members, although discussions on the names continued till late on Wednesday.
Hasina’s Awami League party was not involved in all-party discussions led by army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman, who announced Hasina’s resignation on Monday.
Her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy said in a Facebook post late on Wednesday that the party had not given up yet and was ready to hold talks with opponents and the administration.
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“I had said my family will no longer be involved in politics but the way our party leaders and workers are being attacked, we cannot give up,” Joy said. Yunus is known as the ‘banker to the poor’ and was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for founding a bank that pioneered fighting poverty with small loans to needy borrowers.
He is due to arrive in the capital Dhaka from Paris on Thursday, where he had been receiving medical treatment.
“I’m looking forward to going back home and see what’s happening there and how we can organise ourselves to get out of the trouble that we’re in,” Yunus said before he boarded a flight on Wednesday evening.
Hasina’s dramatic exit on Monday from the country she ruled for four terms – and was reelected to a fifth in January – triggered jubilation and violence across Bangladesh, as crowds stormed and ransacked her official residence unopposed.
She fled to neighbouring India where she is taking shelter at an air base near the capital New Delhi.
Who is the Bangladesh army chief who announced Hasina’s resignation?
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