As a passionate and dedicated supporter of the Yunus interim government -- and a veteran marketing and communications professional -- it is painful for me to watch them make such fundamental, avoidable mistakes.
Given the strength of emotion surrounding it, the attempted demolition of Road 32 was inevitable at some point, so why wasn’t it under 24/7 police or military protection? If out of respect for Mujib, then simply to prevent the kind of disaster we witnessed on Wednesday night and the deluge of criticism that now follows.
This was a predictable crisis, and yet they walked straight into it.
The Yunus administration’s PR has been nothing short of appalling. Look at the catastrophic mishandling of the Chinmoy affair: While Hasina and the BJP flooded social media with industrial-scale disinformation, the Yunus IG was nowhere to be seen on Twitter/X -- the platform where political narratives are formed and propagated globally. Not a word to challenge the falsehoods. Not a single coordinated effort to control the narrative.
Meanwhile, the IG press office -- who should be leading the charge -- barely tweets and appears to remain oblivious to how Bangladesh is being trashed internationally. Instead, they communicate more or less solely in a Facebook echo chamber, preaching to the converted while the real battle rages elsewhere.
This government needs professionals -- urgently. It must stop behaving like a polite academic seminar and start acting with the strategic sharpness that power demands. If it cannot, then it must step aside for those who can. Because, right now, the Yunus IG is not just failing itself -- for all the good it has done, if it does not take control of the narrative then ultimately it will fail Bangladesh.
The stakes are simply too high to let either outsiders or the Awami League create the narrative and define the meaning of the July uprising and where we are today as a nation. If we lose control of the narrative, we run the risk of losing everything.
Toffael Rashid is a global marketing professional.