Bangladeshi officials meet student demand to name Nobel laureate as leader

DHAKA, Bangladesh - Bangladesh’s president and security chiefs met the demand of student leaders on Tuesday to name Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus as the country’s transitional leader, an initial step in restoring order after mass protests forced the former prime minister to resign and flee, according to a statement from the office of President Mohammed Shahabuddin.

The organizers of the student protests that ousted former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had nominated Yunus as their pick for transitional leader, and they met with Shahabuddin and the heads of the country’s security services for nearly six hours to negotiate the formation of an interim government.

Up until the late-night decision, the country’s political future had hung in the balance after protesters stormed Hasina’s residence on Monday.

Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, is seen as having drawn the ire of Hasina after briefly considering a political career - she once accused him of “sucking blood from the poor.” Under her tenure, he faced more than 100 lawsuits ranging from money laundering to labor law violations, allegations that he has consistently denied. Yunus said he expected the “fake cases” to be dropped now that Hasina is no longer in power.

Shahabuddin had earlier dissolved Parliament by the midafternoon deadline demanded by protesters, effectively annulling the outcome of disputed elections earlier this year.

Nahid Islam, the coordinator of the protests, told reporters that his organization recommended names of students and civil society members to form the rest of the government. “Only an interim government proposed by students who led the upsurge will be an acceptable one. That is the promise we received from Bangabhaban,” Islam said, referring to the president’s palace.

Islam added that student organizers will consult with political parties about who else to name to the interim government.

Gen. Waker-Uz-Zaman, the army chief, had said Monday that the army would work with political parties and Shahabuddin to form a temporary government - only for Islam to issue a message on social media that day rejecting “any army-supported or army-led government.”

Weeks of bloody clashes between protesters and security forces culminated in the storming of Hasina’s residence and the Parliament building as well as the burning of government offices Monday. Even as Waker-Uz-Zaman called for calm, 99 people were killed in clashes on Monday and Tuesday, according to a Washington Post tally following interviews with seven hospital authorities and doctors across Bangladesh - bringing the estimated death toll to at least 400 on both sides in the past month.

With a government curfew lifted Tuesday, schools and some businesses were open, and the streets were still packed with people celebrating Hasina’s ouster, though in fewer numbers. Police and the security forces with which protesters have clashed in recent weeks were absent. Even traffic police were a rare sight in the capital.

Volunteers guarded buildings and historical monuments that were vandalized or damaged as the protests boiled over. Small fires continued to burn in official establishments. Hundreds of people continued to occupy the Parliament, some even showering in the bathrooms, while army personnel in the lobby turned a blind eye.

Islam, the protest organizer, had urged Shahabuddin to quickly form an interim government led by Yunus, an economist and banker known for pioneering microlending, which many see as helping lift the country out of poverty. Islam said the student leaders had spoken to Yunus, who agreed to head the temporary administration.

“We’re all rejoicing - the monster who is on top of us has left. Today we are free,” Yunus said by phone from Paris on Monday night, adding that he would return to Bangladesh as soon as possible.

“A new force has emerged: the young people,” he said, adding, “This is a kind of volcanic eruption.”

Local media reported that Hasina escaped minutes before protesters entered her residence, leaving on a military helicopter to India with her younger sister, Sheikh Rehana, in a dramatic end to her 15 years at the country’s helm.

“The million-dollar question today is what ultimately led to her downfall,” said Shafqat Munir, a research fellow at the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies. “What we do know is that the military made it clear that they will stand with the people and they will not fire on the protesters. That might have precipitated the whole chain of events.”

On Sunday evening, the students called for a mass march to Dhaka the next day. Authorities shut down the internet and implemented a curfew Monday but were unable to control the people flooding into the capital, which local media reported to be in the hundreds of thousands.

As people took to the streets across Bangladesh, regular life was upended. Most of the garment factories that power the country’s economy did not open. Dhaka’s main airport temporarily shut down operations. Vehicles and buildings were set ablaze.

Footage on social media and TV showed some protesters lying in the beds of top officials’ homes and carrying away objects such as sofas, an air cooler and buckets. Others attempted to destroy monuments to the country’s founding president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who is also Hasina’s father - at one point using an excavator to chip away at a colossal statue in his likeness.

Hasina, the country’s longest-serving prime minister and the world’s longest-serving female leader until her ouster, attempted to tell state agencies to crack down further on the protesters violating curfew and vandalizing property, according to local media.

But even after her top officials said the situation could no longer be handled by force, she was persuaded to resign only after speaking to her son and sister, the reports said.

Hasina sought to record an address to the nation, according to the reports, but intelligence officers assessed that she had no time. The protesters were coming.

This is not the first time Hasina has sought refuge in India. She was forced into exile there in 1975 after her father and other family members were killed in a military coup - the first of many in Bangladesh after independence from Pakistan in 1971.

The protests that have gripped the country over the past month started in opposition to a government policy that reserves half of civil service jobs for certain groups, but they evolved into a broad-based opposition movement against Hasina, who has become increasingly authoritarian, rights groups and security analysts say.

Since taking office in 2009, she has been accused of manipulating the country’s elections - including by suing and jailing political opponents - to maintain her grip on power. Hasina’s Awami League and its allies won an election this year that the United States said was neither free nor fair and that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the main opposition, boycotted for those reasons.

Rana Dasgupta, who heads the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, said that since Monday, there had been sporadic attacks against minorities - most of them Hindu - and places of worship in more than half of the country’s 64 districts.

“The police are too busy trying to protect themselves. How will they protect citizens?” Dasgupta said.

“We want to see the Bangladeshi people decide the future of the Bangladeshi government,” U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Monday during a daily briefing.

“All decisions regarding the interim government should be made with respect to democratic principles, rule of law and the will of the Bangladeshi people.”

Many experts said they had anticipated Monday’s seismic events. “All the preconditions were there,” said Thomas Kean, a Bangladesh expert at the International Crisis Group nonprofit. “It just wasn’t clear where the spark would come from.”

Opposition politicians called for an interim government to be formed on the basis of strong engagement with the student protesters. “They are the architects of this movement,” said Zonayed Saki, a member of the Ganosamhati Andolan progressive political party who attended a meeting Monday headed by the army chief with several other parties. The students “are showing a new path forward for Bangladeshi people,” he said.

While jubilation over Hasina’s departure continued into Tuesday, some observers warned that there was a long road ahead before Bangladeshi politics could be said to have a truly fresh start - including major reforms of institutions that can hold the prime minister accountable.

“Our politicians forgot the invincibility and power of youth. The ruling regime created their own Frankenstein,” said Iftekhar Zaman, executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh, which aided students in the recent protests. “But whether this fall of the regime will translate into a genuine victory with the spirit and content of the student movement remains to be seen.”