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Muhammad Yunus will continue as the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, PTI quoted an adviser in his cabinet as having said on Saturday. This came two days after one of his key allies claimed that Yunus had been considering his resignation.
“He [Yunus] did not say he will leave,” Planning Adviser Wahiduddin Mahmud told reporters after an unscheduled meeting of the advisory council. “He said that while we face many obstacles in carrying out the work and responsibilities assigned to us, we are overcoming them.”
Stating that Yunus was “definitely staying”, Mahmud added that none of the advisers were going anywhere as “the responsibility entrusted to us is a significant one; we cannot abandon this duty”.
Yunus, a Nobel laureate economist, took over as chief adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government three days after Sheikh Hasina resigned as the prime minister and fled to India on August 5. Hasina fled after several weeks of widespread student-led protests against her Awami League government.
On Thursday, Yunus told leaders from the student-led National Citizen Party that he was mulling resignation because he felt that “the situation is such that he cannot work”, PTI reported. He cited difficulties in working amid the failure of political parties to find common ground for change.
Following this, Members of the advisory council joined an abruptly called closed-door meeting on Saturday after a scheduled meeting of the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council at the Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area in Dhaka.
Later in the day, the advisory council stated that the two-hour-long meeting included detailed discussions on “three primary responsibilities entrusted to the interim government – elections, reforms and justice”.
The statement read: “The council discussed how unreasonable demands, deliberately provocative and jurisdictionally overreaching statements, and disruptive programmes have been continuously obstructing the normal functioning environment and creating confusion and suspicion among the public.”
The advisory council believed that a broader unity was essential to maintain national stability, organise free and fair elections, justice and reform, and permanently prevent the return of authoritarianism in the country, it added.
The council also stated that the interim government would listen to the views of political parties and clarify its position on the matter.
“The interim government continued to fulfil its responsibilities by putting national interests above group interests despite all obstacles,” it added. “However, if – under the instigation of defeated forces or as part of a foreign conspiracy – the performance of these responsibilities becomes impossible, the government will present all reasons to the public and then take the necessary steps with the people.”
The interim government upholds the public expectations of the July Uprising,” said the council. “But if the government’s autonomy, reform efforts, justice process, fair election plan, and normal operations are obstructed to the point of making its duties unmanageable, it will, with the people, take the necessary steps.”
The development comes amid reports of tension between the interim government and the country’s military over a possible timeline for holding the parliamentary elections, PTI reported. The discord also allegedly arises from a policy issue related to Bangladesh’s security affairs involving a proposed humanitarian corridor of aid channel to Myanmar’s rebel-held Rakhine state.
Hold polls by December: Bangladesh Nationalist Party
Meanwhile, former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Saturday asked Yunus’ interim government to hold the parliamentary elections by December, PTI reported. It also called for the reconstitution of Yunus’ cabinet by removing “controversial advisers”.
The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has emerged as a key player in the political arena after Hasina’s Awami League was ousted in August.
“We have called for completing the reforms quickly and holding the national election by December,” the news agency quoted Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, a member of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party’s highest policy-making standing committee, after meeting the chief adviser.
Hossain said that the party also asked Yunus to announce a roadmap for holding the elections.
This article first appeared on Scroll.in
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