When Muhammad Yunus flew back to Bangladesh in August, he was greeted by bleak scenes. The streets were still slick with blood, and the bodies of more than 1,000 protesters and children were piled up in morgues, riddled with bullets fired by police.
Sheikh Hasina had just been toppled by a student-led revolution after 15 years of authoritarian rule. She fled the country in a helicopter as civilians, seeking revenge for her atrocities, ransacked her residence.
At 84, Yunus – an economist who won a Nobel prize for pioneering microfinance for the poor – had long given up his political ambitions. He had faced years of vilification and persecution by Hasina, who viewed him a political threat, and he spent much of his time abroad.
But when the student protesters asked him to lead an interim government to restore democracy to Bangladesh, he agreed.
“The damage she had done was monumental,” Yunus told the Guardian, describing the state of Bangladesh when he took charge. “It was a completely devastated country, like another Gaza, except it wasn’t buildings that had been destroyed but whole institutions, policies, people, international relationships.”
Hasina’s reign was dominated by allegations of tyranny, violence and corruption. It culminated in a bloody few weeks over July and August, when more than 1,400 people were killed in protests against her repressive rule, a violent crackdown by police that could amount to a “crime against humanity”, according to the UN. She has denied all use of excessive force.
Yunus’s return to Bangladesh was heralded as the dawn of a new era for the country. In the six months since he took charge, senior police officers – no longer under Hasina’s protection – have been prosecuted for extrajudicial killings, secret detention centres where Hasina’s critics were allegedly tortured have been emptied, human rights commissions have been established and Hasina is facing hundreds of charges, which she denies. Yunus has pledged that, sometime between December this year and March 2026, Bangladesh will hold its first free and fair elections in decades, after which he will hand over power.
But walking the streets of Dhaka, there is a feeling that the country stands at a precipice. While Yunus is still widely respected, questions have been raised over his governance capabilities and the pace of promised reform.
Political parties, particularly the Bangladesh National party (BNP), have been desperate to return to power and have exerted mounting pressure on Yunus to hold elections, calling into question his legitimacy. The students who led the revolution have also launched their own party.
The senior BNP figure Amir Chowdhury said elections could not come soon enough. “This government was only meant as an interim measure,” he said. “Right now nobody is accountable on a day-to-day basis and they don’t have the political weight, mandate and mobilisation to carry out reforms.”
The article appeared in the theguardian