DHAKA: Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus returned Dhaka to strife-torn Bangladesh on Thursday, to lead a new interim government following weeks of tumultuous student protests forced Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to quit and flee to India.
Bangladesh will set up a new, interim government headed by Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist Muhammad Yunus today.
Yunus, a harsh critic of deposed Sheikh Hasina, was proposed for the job by the student protesters who led the campaign against Sheikh Hasina. Muhammad Yunus was expected to be sworn in as chief adviser along with a team of advisers on Thursday in an interim government which the army chief stated may include 15 members, although talks on the names continued till late on Wednesday.
Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party was not involved in all parties talks led by army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman, who announced her resignation on Monday. Yunus is due to arrive Dhaka from Paris on Thursday, where he had been receiving treatment.
Sheikh Hasina’s dramatic exit on Monday from the South Asian country she ruled for four terms — and was reelected to a 5th in January — triggered jubilation and violence across the country, as crowds stormed her official residence unopposed. Sheikh Hasina fled to India where she is taking refuge at an air base near New Delhi.
Yunus and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), called for calm and an end to violence in the country on Wednesday. “No revenge and destruction,” said Sheikh Hasina’s arch rival and BNP leader Khaleda Zia, in a video address from her hospital bed to her supporters at a rally in Dhaka.
Zia and her exiled son Tarique Rahman, addressed the rally and called for elections to be conducted within three months.
