Interim leader Muhammad Yunus takes the helm in Bangladesh, to seek peace and prepare elections
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Transcript
00:00Good to have you with us. First this hour, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has been sworn in as Bangladesh's interim leader
00:06following the resignation of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. She fled to India this week
00:11after weeks of student protests over job quotas grew into an uprising
00:16against her increasingly autocratic rule. For the very latest, we spoke earlier with France 24's Navadita Kumari.
00:23She's on the ground in the capital Dhaka.
00:25It is a sense of positivity and hope a day after
00:32Muhammad Yunus was sworn in as the chief advisor of the interim government.
00:38After what the country has gone through in the last few weeks, the violence, the killing,
00:44the killings of number of protesters here, what people want is some order and peace
00:51from Muhammad Yunus. They see optimism in him. Last night along with
00:58Muhammad Yunus, 13 other member of cabinets also
01:03took oath ceremony. This group is quite diverse, experts coming from different fields.
01:09There are some economists, ex-bureaucrats,
01:13women leaders, members of minority communities and also two young
01:18leaders from the students movement, but they all have one thing in common.
01:24No one has any experience in politics.
01:28So what the people want from Muhammad Yunus is to establish law and order as soon as possible
01:35but they are really optimistic about him.
01:40Navadita Kumari reporting there. Well for more on this story, we're joined now by Dr
01:45Sowella Nazneen, senior fellow at the UK-based Institute of Development Studies.
01:50Thank you so much for being with us on the program this morning. As we heard there from Navadita, people
01:57are looking for law and order to be restored, but they are feeling optimistic in Bangladesh.
02:02Yunus is now faced with two immediate tasks, restoring peace and preparing for fresh elections.
02:08How difficult do you think that is going to be?
02:11Good morning. Thank you for having me on the show.
02:15The challenges are,
02:18there are lots of challenges and it's not just those two. Of course restoring law and order
02:23is a key focus at this point. We have heard news and incidents of looting,
02:30reprisals, attack on police station. The police force is largely absent. They have been asked to join
02:38work. The emergency services are overwhelmed.
02:41But we have also heard of positive efforts by the community and the students to guard places.
02:49They have also
02:52are cleaning up and providing services.
02:55But there's also pressure on ensuring the economy is stable because there is a liquidity crisis. Bangladesh Bank has
03:01put caps on how much you can withdraw from banks.
03:05So these are all challenges that need to be tackled now.
03:10In terms of elections,
03:12yes, that is a key task, but it's also about reforming the institutions because institutions have been heavily politicized.
03:20So this applies to the police, the civil administration,
03:24the judiciary. So institutional reform will be a key task.
03:29It's not just about ensuring elections.
03:33And remind us if you will just how exactly we got to this
03:36point and will the appointment of this interim administration be enough to ease the concerns of protesters?
03:43The protesters, you know that two of the student coordinators are in
03:49have been
03:51sworn in as
03:52advisors to the government. They have also established
03:55a liaison committee that will be relaying their concerns. They're also keeping an eye on
04:01how things unfold. And their demands are very clear that this time
04:06it's not just about election and it is not just going to be about same old,
04:11same old. So they're willing to cooperate and they represent
04:17their wishes actually reflect what people also want or what people have been talking about. So they do have the support
04:24of the public.
04:25Well, they might have the support, but do they have the experience as our correspondent explained earlier?
04:30Most of them don't have any experience in actually governing a country.
04:36So how do you expect them to perform and how long are they likely to remain in place, do you think?
04:44So I haven't seen any news about how long the government is likely to be in place.
04:50That has been debated in terms of should it be short or should it be longer. Institutional reform does take
04:56a longer time than just sort of holding elections, right?
05:01But at the same time in terms of the students may lack experience, but we have other advisors who do have
05:08experience. They're part of civil society
05:11groups or they have served as lawyers or technocrats.
05:16So it needs to be a government that is led by consensus.
05:20So we are expecting there is going to be lots of deliberations and decisions
05:25based on that.
05:27And it has currently been led, of course, by Mohammed Yunus, who has just been sworn in. He's a Nobel laureate,
05:33but not widely known outside the country. Who is he?
05:38Mohammed Yunus is the founder of Grameen Bank. He's well known as the banker to the poor.
05:45When Grameen Bank was established, it was a revolutionary idea that you can lend money to the poor without collateral.
05:53And his organization
05:57has connections to every single part of the country in the sense that it provides
06:03loans and then it has also moved from microcredit to
06:08thinking about social
06:11programs for the poor. So he's quite well known and respected in the country, but also in the international circles,
06:18particularly in the development circles, because I work in development studies and he's respected, very well respected.
06:25So the Prime Minister of Pakistan sent congratulations to Yunus this morning.
06:31How is his appointment being viewed more broadly in the region? Bangladesh does have a rather complex strategic
06:38relationship with India, for example, but also with China and the U.S.
06:42Yes, geopolitically, we are a small country. We do face pressure from all the other
06:49large countries. If you have seen the news,
06:53both the U.S. and the EU have welcomed Yunus's appointment. You may also be
06:59aware about in 2007 and 2008, we did have a technocratic government led by the military
07:06because of the unrest that was happening in 2007 and none of the political parties believed that
07:13the elections would be free and fair. The reason why I'm mentioning that is at that time
07:17there was some idea floated that whether Yunus would establish a political
07:22party and whether you can
07:24have a different kind of politics in the country because
07:28Bangladesh has been dominated by Al-Malik and BNP in terms of electoral politics.
07:34So
07:35the political wishes of having a third party or a party that's not
07:41connected to the usual political parties that we have seen on the scene
07:47is known to the powers that we are talking about.
07:51Both the U.S. and the EU have congratulated the appointment and have said that they are
07:57looking forward to working with the new government.
08:00Prime Minister Modi has tweeted that
08:03and congratulated Yunus, although we know that it's going to be tricky in terms of how
08:11relations unfold with India because India has been a close ally of the Hafena government.
08:18But just as India is a reality for us, we are also a reality
08:23for India in terms of the shared borders and unrest in Bangladesh wouldn't serve India very well.
08:31So they would have to think about stability
08:34in the neighboring country.
08:36I think with the smaller countries in South Asia, we do have their sympathy and Yunus is quite well respected in the civil society
08:45of Sri Lanka and Nepal.
08:47Suwela, thank you so much for your time on the program. That is Dr.
08:51Suwela Nazneen, Senior Fellow at the UK-based Institute of Development Studies.