Muhammad Yunus Set to Lead Bangladesh Temporarily
Bangladesh is expected to swear in an interim administration on Thursday, days after its entrenched leader was toppled by protests and forced to flee, leaving the country in violent chaos and profound uncertainty.
The interim government’s high-profile leader, the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, arrived in Dhaka from Paris, where he was a guest at the Olympics. He was scheduled to be sworn in along with more than a dozen other members of the interim administration later in the day.
Mr. Yunus, a well-regarded pioneer of microfinance that extended small loans to women and the rural poor, faces the immediate and daunting task of restoring order to daily life and to the economy.
The army chief, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, said at a news conference late Wednesday that the military had extended its support to Mr. Yunus in restoring order. He said he had spoken to Mr. Yunus on the phone, and that he would receive him at the airport when he landed.
The toppled leader, Sheikh Hasina, had transformed a parliamentary government — something devised to easily weather leadership change — into a deeply centralized system in which she held all the power. An escalating crackdown on protests, which went on until she boarded a plane to India, left about 400 people dead, and once she was gone, it resulted in a total collapse of government authority.
The police force, long accused of abuses while keeping Ms. Hasina in power, has faced violent retribution since she left. Officers have vanished from the streets. The civil service is paralyzed. An already-stagnating economy is in tatters, with foreign reserves dwindling.
Mr. Yunus, 84, has said he sees his job as helping restore trust in the government, and that he has no political aspirations beyond helping in this transition period. In 2007 Mr. Yunus started a political party, offering an alternative to a corruption-riddled political establishment. But it accomplished little besides offending powerful figures, including Ms. Hasina. In recent years he has been busy fighting legal entanglements after her ruling party bogged him down in more than 100 court cases that his supporters call politically motivated.
“Let us not let this slip away because of our mistakes,” Mr. Yunus said in a statement on Wednesday. “I fervently appeal to everybody to stay calm. Please refrain from all kinds of violence.”
In the capital, Dhaka, police stations were largely empty late on Wednesday, and many of them were scenes of devastation, with shattered windows, burned-out vehicles and charred furniture. Army personnel guarded the main government buildings, while an auxiliary force was guarding what remained of the police stations.
There were reports of revenge attacks across the country against leaders of Ms. Hasina’s toppled ruling party, as well as violence against religious minorities, particularly Hindus. Bangladesh has a history of Islamist militancy, which Ms. Hasina had tried to rein in.
Robberies were reported across the city on Wednesday, with mosques in some areas using their loudspeakers to urge vigilance. That only added to the fear. In some neighborhoods, residents armed with sticks were carrying out their own patrols to deter robbers.
The city’s landscape also appeared changed. Posters of Ms. Hasina and her father, which once dotted nearly every corner, were defaced or gone entirely.
While some shops and street stalls have reopened, larger shopping centers and malls remained closed Wednesday out of fear of looting and vandalism. By the end of the day, Dhaka’s usual traffic jams were resuming, as offices had opened and people had tried to to return to work. But there was no sign of the traffic police to help with the knots in intersections. In many parts of the city, student protesters had started directing traffic — some even extending their authority to questioning motorbike riders for not wearing helmets.
With the police missing in action, the military force of roughly 200,000 is left in charge of securing the country of 170 million. It is stretched in its abilities, but also in its credibility as a force with a history of coups and abuses, and one stacked by loyalists of Ms. Hasina.
The army chief, who blamed much of the chaos on the disappearance of the police, said new leadership had been appointed for the force, and that he hoped that officers would be back to their regular duties soon.
“The void police left, it is not possible to fill it up with army members,” he said.
#Muhammad #Yunus #Set #Lead #Bangladesh #Temporarily