Bangladesh interim govt in turmoil. Will Muhammad Yunus resign?

As political parties in Bangladesh fail to reach common ground for bringing change in the country, interim government chief Muhammad Yunus is reportedly considering resignation, according to a media report.

Student-led National Citizen Party chief Nhid Islam was quoted by BBC Bangla Service that Yunus is apprehensive over the evolving political situation in the country and whether he will be able to carry on with his work.

“He (Yunus) said he is thinking about it (resignation). He feels that the situation is such that he cannot work,” Islam said on Thursday night after he met with the 84-year-old leader.

Islam said he went to meet Chief Adviser Yunus after hearing throughout the day about the speculation of his resignation.

“Sir (Yunus) said, ‘If I can’t work… I was brought here after a mass uprising to bring change and reform to the country. But in the current situation, with mounting pressure from movements and the way I’m being cornered, this isn’t how I can work,” Islam told the BBC Bangla.

Another media report referring to unnamed sources close to Yunus said he actually threatened to resign if political parties do not give him their backing and expressed his desire to quit at a cabinet or advisory council meeting earlier on Thursday.

It said the other advisers, effectively ministers, however, persuaded him not to do so.

Islam told the BBC that he urged Yunus “’to stay strong for the sake of the country’s security, and future and to meet the expectations of the mass uprising’ (and) I hope everyone will cooperate with him”.

Islam, one of the key coordinators of the Students Against Discrimination (SAD), who previously served as one three representatives of the platform in the interim government’s advisory council or cabinet, quit his office to lead the NCP that emerged in February this year visibly with Yunus’s blessings.

The SAD led the July uprising last year forcing the ouster of prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League regime on August 5, 2024.

Three days later Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize winner for experiment of microfinance, flew from Paris to take charge.

The development of Yunus's resignation came amid reports of some discord between the military and the interim government over the possible timeline for holding the parliamentary elections and a policy issue related to Bangladesh’s security affairs involving a proposed humanitarian corridor of aid channel to Myanmar’s rebel-held Rakhine state.

Army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman along with the navy and air force chiefs met Yunus three days ago and reportedly reiterated their call for election by December this year to allow an elected government take charge and conveyed their reservation about the corridor issue.

The next day, Zaman called a senior officers meeting at Dhaka Cantonment to review the situation and reportedly informed them that he was in the dark on several strategic policy decisions though it was extending its service as a law enforcement agency in the current turmoil.

During the last year’s street protests, the army preferred not to launch a crackdown on protesters despite being called out to tame the uprising but extended its hand for Hasina’s safe exit to India using an air force plane.

The army also facilitated installation of Yunus as the chief adviser, effectively the prime minister, in line with the demand of the SAD, a large part of which now emerged as NCP.

Yunus’s administration recently disbanded Awami League sending many of its senior leaders, including former ministers, to jail to face trial for charges like crimes against humanity while ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) emerged as the main actor in the political arena.

Yunus’s reported threat to resign came a day after the BNP rallied thousands of supporters to stage a large-scale protest for the first time with election being held at the earliest being one of their demands while the NCP and several Islamist groups preferred Yunus’s reform agenda to be implemented first ahead of the polls.

The BNP this week demanded removal of the remaining student representatives from the cabinet while the NCP in response called for ouster of two advisers alleging that they were serving BNP’s purpose by staying in the government.

The interim government on May 12 officially disbanded Hasina’s Awami League under an overnight revised anti-terrorism law, two days after it slapped a ban on its “activities” under the previous version of the law.

Yunus has been facing calls from the political parties, including the BNP, to announce a date for the next elections.

The South Asian nation of some 170 million people has been in political turmoil since the ouster of the past regime but it escalated in the past several days with rival parties and trade unions or pressure groups protesting on the streets of the capital Dhaka with a string of competing demands.

Chief of Bangladesh’s main Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, which opposed the country’s 1971 independence from Pakistan, Shafiqur Rahman urged Yunus to call an all-party meeting to address the crisis.