Minister says Yunus ‘not going to ‘step down'
Muhammad Yunus 'needs to remain' in office as interim leader to ensure a peaceful transition of power, said a cabinet member and special adviser to Yunus.
Yunus, the 84-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner who took over after a mass uprising last year, had threatened to quit if parties did not give him their backing, a political ally said.
The South Asian nation has been in political turmoil since the student-led revolt that toppled then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina in August 2024.
'For the sake of Bangladesh and a peaceful democratic transition, Professor Yunus needs to remain in office,' Faiz Ahmad Taiyeb, a special assistant to Yunus, said in a post on Facebook.
'The Chief Adviser is not going to step down,' he added. 'He does not hanker after power.'
He later deleted his post.
Yunus's reported threat to stand down came after thousands of supporters of the powerful Bangladesh Nationa list Party (BNP) rallied in Dhaka on Wednesday, holding large-scale protests against the interim government for the first time.
Yunus has promised polls will be held by June 2026 at the latest.
But supporters of the BNP demanded he fix a date.
Yunus's relationship with the military has also reportedly deteriorated.
Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman said on Wednesday that elections should be held by December, warning that Bangladesh was in a 'chaotic phase' and that the 'situation is worsening by the day'.
Taiyeb issued a warning to the army on Friday.
'The army can't meddle in politics,' he wrote. 'The army doesn't do that in any civilised country.'
The army played a decisive role in ending Hasina's rule by not stepping in to quash the uprising, after at least 1,400 protesters were killed in a police crackdown.
The army issued a statement late aimed to combat those seeking to create divisions between the military and the public.
It also released a list of the hundreds of people it had briefly sheltered in army bases in the chaotic days following Hasina's ouster 'to save them from extrajudicial killings'.
The National Citizen Party (NCP) – made up of many of the students who led the uprising against Hasina, and a group close to Yunus – had accused the army of supporting Hasina's Awami League party.
Hasina, 77, remains in self-imposed exile in India, where she has defied an arrest warrant to face trial for crimes against humanity related to the police crackdown. — AFP
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