Sheikh Hasina-Muhammad Yunus Conflict Illustrates A Dictator’s Paranoia

Dr. Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh’s only Nobel Laureate, who was scorned and persecuted by the ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was on Tuesday appointed Head of the Interim government by President Muhammed Shahabuddin.

The decision was reached during a meeting at the Bangabhaban on Tuesday night, where the President, military chiefs and Anti-discrimination Student Movement coordinators were present.

The movement’s coordinators had proposed an Interim Government led by the 84-year old Yunus. The 13 coordinators of the student movement attended the meeting at the invitation of the president and Army Chief Gen Waker-uz-Zaman, the real power centre in Bangladesh now.

Sheikh Hasina had fled the country on Monday unable to withstand the widespread, month-long and violent student agitation.

There was poetic justice in the choice of Muhammad Yunus. Celebrated globally as a pioneer in the movement to extend cheap credit to poor rural women in Bangladesh, Yunus was scorned by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

A court had sentenced him to imprisonment on unsubstantiated charges of levying usurious interest on loans, swindling funds from the organisations he set up and being an American agent, on top of all that.

But the student agitation, which led to Hasina’s fleeing the country, pitchforked Yunus to be considered for the top position in post-agitation Bangladesh.

Given the international outcry over Hasina’s actions against Yunus, a Bangladesh court gave Yunus bail and allowed him to go to Paris to attend the Olympics as a special invitee. While in Paris, Yunus agreed to lead the Interim Government as its CEO.

“When I was contacted on behalf of the students, I didn't agree at first. I told them I have a lot of work to finish. But the students repeatedly requested me," Yunus said.

The students reportedly told Yunus that many people lost their lives in the movement and many students and common people were killed. Now Bangladesh has the opportunity to run the country in a proper way. And it is possible only if he also took responsibility.

“If you don't agree to take responsibility, it won't be good for any of us. That's why we're asking you to take responsibility," Yunus was reportedly told. Yunus felt that since these students had protested so much, and paid so much for it, that he should also put his shoulders to the wheel.

"If the students can sacrifice so much, if the people of the country can sacrifice so much, then I also have some responsibility. Then I told the students that I can take the responsibility," Yunus said.

Amid celebrations, student Juairia Karim said it was a historic day: “Today we are getting what we deserve,” she said. “Everyone is happy, everyone is cheerful.” Student leader Nahid Islam said the protesters would propose more names for the Cabinet, and suggested that it would be difficult for those in power to ignore their wishes.

Known as the "banker to the poor", Dr. Yunus and the Grameen Bank (Rural Bank) he founded won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for helping lift millions from poverty by providing tiny loans of sums less than U$ 100 to the rural poor who are too impoverished to gain attention from traditional banks, Reuters said.

“His lending model has since inspired similar projects around the world, including developed countries like the United States where Yunus started a separate non-profit Grameen America,” ‘Reuters’ reported.

As his success and global recognition grew, Yunus flirted with politics, and attempted to form his own party in 2007. Sheikh Hasina saw Yunus as a credible challenger, with grassroots Bangladeshi support as well as Western support. She felt threatened though Yunus had promoted her in international forums, using his influence among Western elite.

Turning viciously against Yunus, Hasina accused him of "sucking the blood of the poor". Her vilification campaign gained some credence because in neighbouring countries like India and Sri Lanka there were many instances of micro-credit companies slapping high interest rates on poor rural women and driving them further into debt. But Yunus pointed out that the rates charged by Grameen Bank were far lower than the local norm in developing countries.

In 2011, Hasina removed Yunus from the chairmanship of Grameen Bank, saying that at 73, he had stayed on past the legal retirement age of 60. This created a dispute as to whether the Grameen Bank could be treated as a government bank. However, Hasina’s actions did not strike a chord among Grameen Bank’s clients. Thousands formed a human chain to protest his sacking.

Nevertheless, in January 2024, Yunus was sentenced to six months in prison for violations of labour law. Additionally, in June, he and 13 others were indicted by a Bangladesh court on charges of embezzlement of US$ 2 million from the workers' welfare fund of a telecom company he founded.

Although he was not actually put in prison, having got bail, Yunus faced more than 198 cases on graft and other charges, which he said were "very flimsy, made-up stories".

His international network of friends stood up to defend him. In an open letter to Hasina in 2023, more than 170 influential world figures, including former US President Barack Obama, former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and over 100 Nobel laureates called on Hasina to halt the “continuous judicial harassment”.

“We are confident that any thorough review of the anti-corruption and labour law cases against him will result in his acquittal. We sincerely wish that he [will] be able to continue his path-breaking work free of persecution or harassment,” a joint appeal said.

The United Nations Human Rights office also issued a statement on September 5, saying it was concerned over Yunus facing “harassment and intimidation for almost a decade”.

“While Yunus will have the opportunity to defend himself in court, we are concerned that smear campaigns against him, often emanating from the highest levels of government, risk undermining his right to a fair trial and due process in line with international standards,” the UNHCR office stated.

An angry Hasina responded by saying Yunus had “begged” for international statements and welcomed the global figures to analyse the cases against him. When Bangladesh’s Deputy Attorney General Imran Ahmed Bhuiyan said he agreed with what the global leaders and bodies said about Yunus, he was sacked.

The mistake that Yunus made was that he posed himself as a saviour of Bangladesh at a time when Hasina thought that only her father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and herself were the saviours.

Riding on his popularity as Bangladesh’s first-ever Nobel laureate, Yunus made the cardinal error of founding his own political party, the Nagorik Shakti (Citizens’ Power) in 2007. He was soon touted as a potential leader of a caretaker government to oversee the general elections.

Though he soon abandoned the plan, Hasina and her Awami League party seemed to have stuck with the idea that a banker with well-known friends in the West could be a potential candidate for the Prime Minister’s post.

“Yunus’s decision to form a new political party during a volatile political period with an extended military-backed caretaker government rubbed the Awami League party the wrong way,” Michael Kugelman, director of South Asian Institute of US-based think tank The Wilson Center, told ‘Al Jazeera’.

“Yunus and his supporters would say he was simply trying to establish a third way beyond corrupt, dynastic politics. But that’s not how Sheikh Hasina and other Awami League leaders saw it back then,” Kugelman commented.

In 2012, the World Bank pulled out from the Padma Bridge project , Sheikh Hasina’s pet project, citing corruption. The government finally completed the project last year with its own money. But Hasina blamed Yunus for the cancellation, charging that he influenced the bank. Yunus’ urging of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011 to intercede on his behalf during the Grameen Bank leadership tussle was widely believed to have led the World Bank to pull away from funding the Padma Bridge project.

In December 2021, Washington imposed sanctions on Bangladesh’s elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) paramilitary unit and some of its officials for their alleged involvement in extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. Hasina thought that Yunus was behind the US moves.Rumour mills in Bangladesh kept churning out stories about the US wanting to install a caretaker government headed by Yunus.

The situation changed after Sheikh Hasina‘s credibility declined sharply in 2023 and 2024. An increasing number of people began to see America from a favourable angle as an ally against Hasina’s dictatorial tendencies.

Today, there is a general demand not just for Yunus’ rehabilitation but for the use of his talent and experience in nation-building on sound lines as per international standards.