Nobel Peace Prize laureate and “banker to the poor” Mohammad Yunus has taken over as interim prime minister of Bangladesh, two days after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who had been hostile to him in speeches and in the judiciary, fled the country.
Yunus gained international fame after winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his contribution to the country’s economic development.
The economist helped lift millions of rural women out of poverty through his pioneering microfinance bank, Grameen Bank.
“Man was not born to suffer misery, hunger and poverty,” Yunus said upon receiving the Nobel Prize.
After receiving the award, he considered starting a party before quickly abandoning the project, which had drawn hostility from the ruling elite.
Hasina’s 15-year government, which ended with her resignation on Monday, showed increasing resolve in suppressing political dissent, making the economist’s popularity a potential challenger.
Leaders of the student protests that toppled Hasina on Monday said they wanted Mohammad Yunus to head an interim government.
The presidency said in a statement on Wednesday that the decision to "form an interim government (...) headed by Yunus" was taken during a meeting between President Mohammad Shahabuddin, senior military officers and leaders of the Students Against Discrimination group, the movement that organised the demonstrations in early July.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate said in a written statement to AFP on Tuesday that he was ready to take on the task.
"I have always stayed away from politics... but today, if it is necessary to act in Bangladesh, for my country, for the courage of my people, I will do so," he said in a statement, calling for "free elections".
A string of cases
Yunus has faced hundreds of court cases and was the target of an aggressive campaign by a state-run Islamist organisation that accused him of promoting homosexuality.
The government forced him to leave Grameen Bank in 2011, a decision that Yunus appealed but which the country's Supreme Court upheld.
His supporters blamed Sheikh Hasina, who accused him of “sucking the blood of the poor” by raising interest rates.
In January, Yunus and three colleagues at Grameen Telecom, one of the companies he founded, were sentenced to six months in prison after being convicted of violating labour laws.
The four deny the charges, which their supporters and rights groups such as Amnesty International say are politically motivated, and have been released on bail pending appeal.
‘Desperate’ poverty
Yunus was born on June 28, 1940, to a wealthy family in Chittagong. His father was a prominent goldsmith. He said he was particularly influenced by his mother, Sofia Khatun, who would constantly ask for alms to help the poor.
After returning to the country in 1971 after studying economics in the United States, he took over as head of the economics department at Chittagong University.
He immediately set about fighting poverty, which had been exacerbated by the Great Famine of 1974.
“There was extreme poverty everywhere, and I couldn’t ignore it,” he said in 2006.
“It was hard for me to study beautiful economic theories in university classes… I had to do something right away to help the people around me.”
His first initiative was to lend his own money to poor basket weavers. The goal was to make it easier for the poor to access microfinance loans, according to the Nobel Foundation.
Over the years, his initiative became the Grameen Bank, which he founded in 1983 and has grown successfully.
“We have created a world without slavery, a world without smallpox, a world without apartheid. Creating a world without poverty will be the greatest of these achievements and will enshrine it,” he said, adding that “this is a world we can all be proud to live in.”
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