Good politician, bad statesman — what Muhammad Yunus' one year in power reveals

The Print

2 days ago

Not only has Yunus deftly navigated the choppy waters of Bangladeshi politics, he has even turned foes into friends. Plunged into chaos after Hasina's hasty exit on 5 August 2024, Bangladesh, though, is in desperate need of a statesman.
In the one year since Yunus took over as the caretaker to the interim government of Bangladesh on 8 August 2024, the accidental politician has proved himself a consummate one. Detractors who had claimed he won't last three months are now worried if he will even vacate his chair.
If Sheikh Hasina had her way, Muhammad Yunus would have been dunked into the Padma River by now. Not once but twice. But it has been a year since the ousted Bangladeshi prime minister hasn't had her way. In that time, not only has Yunus avoided a plunge into the Padma, but also dashed Hasina's dreams of returning to Bangladesh, all while sitting pretty in the chair she was forced to vacate.
Turning the tables
There has been no love lost between Sheikh Hasina and Muhammad Yunus, much before the latter replaced the former as Bangladesh's premier last year. On 18 May 2022, Hasina had allegedly said, 'He (Yunus) stopped funding for a project like the Padma Bridge because of one managing director post. He should be given two dunks in the Padma River, but lifted up so he doesn't die. Then maybe he will learn a lesson.'
Hasina had said this while blaming Nobel Peace Prize winner, economist Dr Muhammad Yunus, for blocking the World Bank's funding of the Padma bridge project.
That's not all. As recently as 1 January 2024, a court in Bangladesh had sentenced the Nobel laureate to six months in jail for violating Bangladesh's labour laws. Yunus' supporters said the case was politically motivated. The acclaimed economist and three colleagues from Grameen Telecom—one of the firms Yunus founded—were found guilty of failing to create a welfare fund for their workers.
'I call for the Bangladeshi people to speak in one voice against injustice and in favour of democracy and human rights for each and every one of our citizens,' Yunus had said.
Within the next seven months, the people of Bangladesh came out on the streets in large numbers, spoke in one voice, and ousted Hasina. Yunus became the new leader of Bangladesh. And it was Hasina's turn to face the law.
On 15 September 2024, a case was filed against Hasina, accusing her of issuing death threats to both Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia and Yunus. According to the case statement, the plaintiff referred to remarks made by Sheikh Hasina during an event on 18 May 2022, where she spoke about dunking Yunus in the Padma River.
That, along with over 200 cases, a six-month sentence in a contempt case, and three arrest warrants, including one for alleged crimes against humanity during last year's student-led protests, shows how the tables have turned.
But let us pretend that all this is just comeuppance for authoritarian Hasina and that the legal system is completely free and fair under Yunus. And turn to his politics.
He was expected to bring democracy back to Bangladesh after the rule of 'fascist Hasina', where the ruling political class did not differentiate between citizens, stabilised law and order in the country after the violent July-August uprising against Hasina and did not turn against political opponents like Hasina did. The interim government under Yunus has had a dismal record on all these counts, even as the man himself has solidified his position in Bangladesh politics.
One of the main reasons for the discontent against Hasina was the stolen elections that had brought her back to power. I had covered the last national elections in Bangladesh, held on 7 January 2024, and saw how Awami League fought Awami League and won. The country's largest opposition political party at that time, BNP, and the largest Islamist party, the Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, were both kept out of the electoral fray.
Yunus had one job. As the chief of an unelected government, he was tasked with holding a free and fair national election at the earliest. Instead, Yunus has been postponing election dates by insisting on reforms. This has frustrated most political parties in Bangladesh, including BNP, with its acting chairperson, Tarique Rahman, accusing the interim government of deliberately stalling the electoral process.
Yunus has now announced February 2026 as the probable date for the next national election. But many are not convinced. London-based Bangladeshi investigative journalist Sushanta Dasgupta told me he would believe in the news of the next elections in Bangladesh when they actually happen. 'Yunus wants to stick to power. He may very well invent a new crisis to stall the elections. With the Awami League kept out of the electoral fray, this anyway, would be a sham election,' Dasgupta said.
However, one of Yunus' harshest critics within Bangladesh, Army chief Waker-uz-Zaman, who had asked for elections by December 2025, seems to have come around. His army is now guarding leaders of Yunus' favoured political party, the National Citizen Party, from political violence.
The other big charge against Hasina, which now applies to Yunus as well, was going after political opponents and dissenters. In the run-up to the 7 January 2024 elections, the Hasina administration was blamed for attacking, killing, and jailing political opponents. Yunus' administration is on the same path. It is one thing to go after Hasina for her 'crimes', quite another to ban the students' wing of her party, Bangladesh Chhatra League, and then ban her party, Awami League, from all political activities under the Anti-Terrorism Act.
In a previous column for ThePrint, I had written how the Yunus administration is imitating Hasina by going after political dissenters by, rather chillingly, calling it 'Operation Devil Hunt'. Home affairs adviser Lieutenant General Jahangir Alam Chowdhury (Retd) has even said that the said operation will focus on detaining individuals who threaten the nation's stability and will continue 'until all the devils are brought to justice'.
Yunus' record in stabilising the law-and-order situation in Bangladesh and protecting minorities has also been dismal. In a report titled, 'Gotham but No Batman', Al Jazeera reported how muggings, assaults, and rapes have spiked in the Bangladesh capital under the interim government. It has left the youth who risked their lives for change to ask: 'What was it all for? As far as Yunus' role in protecting the rights of minorities is concerned, even the global press has been writing about the attacks on Hindus and other religious minorities.
Political vendetta, worsening law and order situation, attacks on minorities and political dissenters, and delayed poll date. What gives?
Also read: Bangladesh army chief seems to be cosying upto Yunus. Did 5 people have to die for it?
Good politician, bad statesman
That Yunus has aced the game, that is, Bangladesh politics, can be understood by his free pass to Islamists. While the West sees him as a liberal voice, Yunus has freed Islamic fundamentalists of all shades ever since he came to power. Any good politician can read their constituency, and Yunus has understood that beneath the thin crust of a tolerant, pluralistic, mostly urban liberal elite circle, Bangladesh has, over the year,s turned Islamic. And what better way to address that large mass of people than to cater to the fundamentalists and release them from jail?
The other thing that Yunus has read right is the anti-India sentiment in Bangladesh. Soon after Hasina came back to power in Bangladesh, the 'India Out' campaign began with a call for a ban on all Indian goods from the Bangladesh market. Yunus has catered to that sentiment in Bangladesh society by even challenging the territorial integrity of India by talking about the 'Chicken's neck' corridor, the link between India's mainland and its seven northeastern states, and inviting China to take part in a river conservation project. Cosying up to China while fanning India hate in Bangladesh—it takes a good politician to kill proverbial two birds with one stone.
Even as the world complained against the attacks on minorities, Yunus fended off those charges by claiming they were 'exaggerated propaganda'. He insisted the attacks were political in nature and not communal.
Geostrategist Brahma Chellaney writes that the situation has gotten so bad that even the pro-regime BNP, the Awami League's arch-rival for long, has decried the erosion of basic freedoms. The party has called out the 'madness that erupted in the name of religion,' and the 'terrifying violence' on the streets.
'A collapsing economy will only exacerbate these problems. GDP growth has tumbled, foreign debt has ballooned, and inflation has soared to a 12-year high. With investor confidence plummeting, the stock market has fallen to its lowest level in almost five years. Job losses and declining living standards create fertile ground for continued radicalisation and social unrest,' Chellaney writes.
He said that Bangladesh once embodied the promise of secular democracy in a Muslim-majority country, but now it risks slipping into the kind of military-sanctioned dysfunction that has long plagued Pakistan.
It would take a statesman to bring Bangladesh back from this abyss. In his one year in power, Yunus has proved he isn't one.
Deep Halder is an author and journalist. He tweets @deepscribble. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)