Nobel winner Dr Yunus to lead Bangladesh interim government
Nobel Peace laureate Muhammad Yunus will lead Bangladesh's interim government after the resignation of Sheikh Hasina, according to President Mohammad Shahabuddin office.
Student leaders of protests in Bangladesh had said they do not want an army-led interim government but rather one advised by Yunus.
The announcement came after a meeting with Bangladesh's army chief, General Waker-uz-Zaman, who said the previous day that an interim government would be formed, without giving details about who would lead it.
Bangladesh's president also dissolved the parliament on Tuesday. The dissolution of the legislature had been a key demand of the protesters.
Yunus' office had earlier confirmed Tuesday that he has agreed to be an adviser for an interim government before he was announced as chief.
Muhammad Yunus, 84, is a Bangladeshi social entrepreneur, banker, economist, and civil society leader. Born in 1940 in Chittagong, southeastern Bangladesh, he went on to pursue his PhD in economics at Vanderbilt University in the US.
Yunus returned to his hometown in 1972 and became the head of the rural economics program at the University of Chittagong.
After witnessing the devastation caused by the 1974 famine in rural Bangladesh, which killed thousands of people, he began lending small amounts of credit to poor communities.
The Grameen Bank he founded in 1983 later pioneered the use of microlending to help impoverished people, particularly women.
For their efforts toward eradicating poverty, Yunus and the Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. For his work, Yunus gained global prominence as the "banker to the poorest of the poor."
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