Will Yunus go too far with the India bashing?
Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh’s interim leader, faces criticism for overstaying his welcome and pursuing personal agendas despite lacking popular support. He’s in a power struggle with the army and BNP over election timelines, aiming for a ‘reset’ of Bangladesh, potentially involving controversial economic reforms and foreign policy initiatives.
If there is one thing the chief adviser of Bangladesh’s interim administration has clearly shown since the resignation drama of May 24, it is that he is no pushover. In the nine months at the helm, Nobel Prize winner and NGO icon Muhammad Yunus has slipped from being the man the country welcomed as a potential saviour to being regarded as a crafty, divisive figure with a bagful of personal agendas. Yet, lacking a political base of consequence and despite a steep fall in popularity, Yunus has pitted diverse groups against each other and clung on to power — although at a huge cost to Bangladesh.
The latest political crisis to envelop Bangladesh centres on the timetable of the national election that will install a democratic government in Dhaka. In a paradoxical twist, the army has advocated elections by the end of 2025, a demand strongly endorsed by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), now led from London by Begum Khaleda Zia’s son Tarique Rahman. On his part, Yunus has said he wants until end-June 2026 to first bring about unspecified reforms, and also bring the arrested leaders of the Hasina regime to justice. Activists of the National Citizen Party — derisively called the King’s Party — have even suggested that Yunus should be in office for the next five years.
