DHAKA: Bangladesh President Muhammad Yunus, who is set to lead an interim government after mass protests ousted the prime minister, urged his countrymen on Wednesday to be “ready to build the country” ahead of his much-anticipated return.
A Nobel Prize-winning microfinance pioneer will head an interim government after longtime and autocratic Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina fled the country, the presidency said.
“Be calm and prepare to build the country,” Yunus said in a statement on Wednesday, a day before he was expected to return to the country from France, calling for calm after weeks of violence that has killed at least 455 people.
“If we go down the path of violence, everything will be destroyed,” he added.
The appointment came quickly after student leaders called on 84-year-old Yunus, who is credited with lifting millions of people out of poverty in the South Asian country, to lead.
The decision was made in a meeting with President Mohammed Shahabuddin, the chiefs of the army, navy and air force and student leaders, the president’s office said in a statement.
Yunus will have the title of senior adviser, according to Nahid Islam, one of the Students Against Discrimination leaders who attended the meeting. Shahabuddin agreed that an interim government “will be formed in the shortest possible time”, Islam told reporters, calling the meeting “fruitful”.
