Muhammad Yunus, the 84-year-old Nobel laureate and head of the caretaker government as its adviser-in-chief until new elections are staged, has asked competing political parties vying for office to rally behind him in total support.
Bangladesh’s temporary president, who took power following a countrywide rebellion last year, will sit down with influential parties exerting pressure on his government later Saturday, days after the interim leader allegedly threatened to resign.
Muhammad Yunus, 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner and chief adviser to the caretaker government until elections, has appealed to opposition political parties vying for power to wholeheartedly back him. Confirming Yunus would sit down with leaders of the dominant Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) as well as Jamaat-e-Islami leaders, the Muslim-majority country’s biggest Islamist party, his press secretary Shafiqul Alam said.
But the BNP, who is favourite to win in elections, are strongly campaigning for elections to be taken before December. They will be the country’s first elections after a student uprising prompted former prime minister Sheikh Hasina to go into hiding in August 2024. Microfinance innovator Yunus, who has been heading the nation after coming back from exile on protesters’ demand, says he has an obligation to carry out democratic reforms before holding elections.
Yunus has indicated polls could be conducted as early as December, but holding them later, up to a deadline of June, would provide more time for such changes. The South Asian nation of around 170 million people has been in political turmoil since Hasina fled, but this week has seen an escalation with rival parties protesting on the streets of the capital Dhaka with a string of competing demands.
“Our senior members will be there for the talks,” said BNP media official Shairul Kabir Khan. Jamaat-e-Islami’s media spokesperson Ataur Rahman Sarkar also confirmed that they were invited. On Thursday, a political colleague and officials in his office reported that Yunus had threatened to quit if parties and factions within Bangladesh did not support him.
