Chicago – August 07, 2024
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus has agreed to a leading role in Bangladesh’s interim government after the country’s longtime prime minister fled amid a grisly crackdown on youth protesters.
Yunus, 84, known as the “banker to the poor,” and a pioneer in microcredit lending, will serve as “chief advisor” to the new government, the Daily Star newspaper reported Tuesday.
“The caretaker-in-chief will be Professor Yunus,” Shahidul Alam, a leading member of the country’s civil society movement, told USA TODAY. “I spoke to him and he said that he had been approached and he had agreed” to take the role.
Demonstrators who ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday, ending 15 years of increasingly brutal autocratic rule, have demanded that Yunus, a national hero, helm an interim government. Yunus and a top aide did not immediately return emails and calls seeking comment.
