The leader of the main movement that has animated the last month of protests in Bangladesh has chosen Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus to lead the new interim government in Dhaka, which was formed announced yesterday by the armed forces that came to power after the resignation and escape to India of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Meanwhile, the country’s president, Mohammed Shahabuddin, dissolved Parliament.
“We have decided that the interim government will be formed” with “Nobel Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus” as “senior adviser” (i.e. leader of the executive branch) because “he enjoys international fame and wide recognition” at home and abroad, he announced in a video published Today on social media Nahid Islam, leader of the collective “Students against discrimination”.
Yesterday, in an address to the nation, General Waker-Uz-Zaman, the army chief of staff, announced a series of political consultations to form a new interim government, but the collective had let the military know that it would be the protesters, or rather “those who brought the revolution,” who would decide who would govern Bangladesh.
The army chief met yesterday with President Mohammed Shahabuddin, who today dissolved parliament after ordering the release of all those arrested during the protests. Among those released was the 78-year-old former prime minister and opposition leader Khaleda Zia, Sheikh Hasina’s main rival and leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), who has been hospitalized since her 17-year prison sentence for corruption handed down in 2018.
Meanwhile, the death toll from clashes between protesters and police, who had been ordered by the outgoing prime minister and leader of the Awami League party to bloodily repress the demonstrations, has risen to at least 409 victims, 109 of which were recorded in the last 24 hours alone.
The protests began last month when a controversial quota system was reintroduced in public administration that favored the children of veterans of the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan. Thousands took to the streets to protest the decision, which in a country with very high levels of youth unemployment further limited access to public jobs, which are sought after especially by the most educated, and not on grounds of merit but as a sort of birthright.
Sheikh Hasina’s government responded by closing universities and deploying the police and army to quell bloody protests, even imposing a nationwide curfew and blocking internet access. Matters escalated yesterday when, despite a massive security deployment in the capital, thousands of people stormed the prime minister’s official residence after Sheikh Hasina fled abroad.
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