Bangladesh interim govt likely today
DHAKA: Bangladesh’s protest leaders said they expect members of an interim government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, to be finalised on Wednesday after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina quit and fled to India following a violent crackdown on a student-led uprising.
Bangladesh’s president appointed Yunus, who was recommended by student leaders, as the head of the interim government late on Tuesday and said the remaining members need to be finalised soon to overcome the current crisis and pave way for elections..
The interim government will fill a power vacuum left after Bangladesh’s army chief announced Hasina’s resignation in a televised address on Monday that followed weeks of deadly violence that ripped through the country, killing about 300 people and injuring thousands.
“It is critical that trust in government be restored quickly,” Yunus, 84, told the Financial Times on Wednesday, adding that he was not seeking an elected role or appointment beyond the interim period.
His spokesperson said he is expected to return to Dhaka on Thursday after a medical procedure in Paris.
“We need calm, we need a road map to new elections and we need to get to work to prepare for new leadership,” Yunus told the newspaper.
Hasina’s resignation had triggered jubilation across the country and crowds stormed into her official residence unopposed after she fled, ending a 15-year second stint in power.
Public anger was also in part due to economic distress. Bangladesh’s $450 billion economy expanded under Hasina as the mainstay garments sector grew but costly imports, inflation, unemployment and shrinking reserves in recent years pushed it to seek a $4.7 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
“The protests...have exacerbated downside risks to economic growth, fiscal performance, and external metrics,” ratings agency S&P said in a note on Wednesday. “The damage to credit metrics may be contained if the sociopolitical situation normalizes soon and Bangladesh forms a new government.”
Normalcy slowly began returning after Monday’s chaos but protests broke at the headquarters of the Bangladesh Bank in Dhaka on Wednesday when hundreds of officials from the central bank forced four of its deputy governors to resign over alleged corruption, two sources at the bank said. The bank did not immediately comment.
Hundreds of people gathered at a rally in Dhaka by the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, whose leader and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, 78, was freed from house arrest by the president on Tuesday. Zia had feuded and alternated power with rival Hasina, 76, since the early 1990s and she was convicted for graft in 2018 but called the charges politically motivated.