Bangladesh Nobel winner Muhammad Yunus said on Tuesday he was ready to head a caretaker government, a day after the military took control as mass protests forced longtime ruler Sheikh Hasina to flee.
Microfinance pioneer Yunus, 84, is credited with lifting millions out of poverty — earning the enmity of ousted Hasina and the wide respect of millions of Bangladeshis.
“If action is needed in Bangladesh, for my country and for the courage of my people, then I will take it,” he told AFP in a statement, also calling for “free elections”, after student leaders called for him to lead an interim government.
Hasina, 76, had been in power since 2009 but was accused of rigging elections in January and then watched millions of people take to the streets over the past month demanding she quit.
More than 400 people died as security forces sought to quell the unrest but the protests grew and Hasina finally fled aboard a helicopter on Monday after the military turned against her.
The movement that toppled Hasina rose out of demonstrations against public sector job quotas for families of veterans of Bangladesh’s 1971 independence war, seen by critics as a means to reserve jobs for allies of the ruling party.
The unrest began last month in the form of protests against civil service job quotas and then escalated into wider calls for Hasina to stand down.
Army chief General Wakeruz Zaman announced on Monday the military would form an interim government, saying it was “time to stop the violence”.
President Mohammed Shahabuddin dissolved parliament today — a key demand of the student leaders and the major opposition Bangladesh National Party (BNP), which has demanded elections within three months.
The decision to dissolve parliament was taken following meetings with the heads of defence forces, leaders of political parties, student leaders and some civil society representatives, the presidential statement said.
A statement from Shahabuddin’s office also said that Hasina’s arch-rival, BNP chairperson and former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia, had been freed from house arrest.
Student protesters had threatened more demonstrations if parliament was not dissolved.
President Shahabuddin had said earlier that an interim government would hold elections soon after it takes over. Army chief General Wakeruz Zaman was due to meet student leaders to discuss the formation of the government.
Hasina’s flight ended her 15-year second stint in power in the country of 170 million people, which she had ruled for 20 of the last 30 years at the helm of a political movement inherited from her father, state founder Mujibur Rahman, assassinated in 1975.
