Yunus, known as the ‘banker to the poor’ of Bangladesh, is the preferred candidate of the student movement to head the new interim government.
Some of the main leaders of Bangladesh student politics have stated that the country’s current and only Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus must form an interim government following the dictated exodus of Bangladesh’s longtime and incumbent Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina from office.
Nahid Islam, a 26-year-old sociology student who had led the protest against quotas in job issues demanding government jobs by projecting himself as a jobs giver, which later turned into an anti-government protest movement, said in a video message on Facebook that Yunus had agreed to become chief.
“We want to see the process rolling by the morning,” Islam said late on Monday. “We appeal to the president to act as soon as possible to setting up an interim government with Dr. Yunus as head of state.”
The protest organizers were due to meet with the officials of the army on Tuesday, the army affirmed in a statement.
Islam opined that the students would not allow a government formed by the army.
“We have shed blood, been martyred, and now we have to honor our commitment to construct a new Bangladesh,” he added.
“No other government apart from the one suggested by the students will be acceptable; as we have noted, no military government, a government sponsored by the military, or a government of fascists will be acceptable.”
Yunus, 84, got the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 having begun the microlending technique. Hasina’s rule saw the country’s main opposition accusing him of corruption, and he was put on trial, although he claimed the charges leveled against him were political.
A representative of banker Yunus told the news that he had agreed to the students’ demands to become an adviser to the interim government, Reuters mentioned. The Nobel laureate said that he had minor surgery in Paris but he would return to Bangladesh “immediately,” a source from the spokesperson was reported.
