Today, August 8, marks the first anniversary of the interim government. Never did we have an interim government before nor a head of state of Professor Yunus’s stature. And his government is the outcome of a revolution that freed the country from a dictator who was a human only in shape, hunting the unfortunate people of Bangladesh. Since her departure, Bangladesh swings between the nightmare of the past and the shadow of a bright future.
Bangladesh is politically so complex that parameters like “success” and “failure” don’t define it. Yet, for Yunus, the popular version of Einstein’s theory of relativity seems suitable: “An hour sitting with a pretty girl on a park bench passes like a minute, but a minute sitting on a hot stove seems like an hour.” He was --and still is -- “on a hot stove.” Surprisingly, he endures.
That’s not an excuse to throw someone into a raging fire, because he is apparently a firefighter. Getting roasted is his destiny. Professor Yunus survives, because he was thrown into a sea of fellow firefighters. When he was sworn in on August 8, someone seemed to have whispered into my ears a line I read in Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom: “ Truly to lead one’s people, one must also know them.”
Professor Yunus started his journey of getting to know the people in the village of Jobra near Chittagong University in the mid-1970s, and his focus has encompassed the whole country since. He merits leading the country. I had to discover soon, though, that Hasina hardly left any space for leadership. She used to run a prison from a pulpit. She was of superior genes, intelligence, and virtue. She was innocent like a saint and powerful like God. The rest were lesser mortals.
People were disgusted. Anger seethed. As she fled, people imploded -- Hasina truly is the mother of the mob. It’s a curse that Professor Yunus’s government inherited, and the problem is already so chronic that it seems intractable. Blaming the government for this is reductive. The government unequivocally condemns it. It’s sincere to contain it, too.
It still doesn’t register in our consciousness that a government can be sincere and trustworthy because of Hasina’s legacy -- she was a pathological liar. She said brazenly, “No one shot from the helicopters. They drizzled water from the helicopters.” Footage of firing from the helicopters surfaced online in July and August last year. She trusted no one; no one trusted her, either.
Bangladesh is a land of skeptics now -- politically, at least. Professor Yunus is not a politician, but he is the epicentre of politics in Bangladesh. His statements and actions are politicized. Brouhaha explodes. And Professor Yunus has egg on his face. They, for example, raised the roof about leasing one of our ports, the emergence of Starlink, and a Security Corridor as if these were the issues on which the country’s existence is dependent. And because Professor Yunus is the chief patron of a cabal of clowns and criminals, the country is endangered. Is the case so? These were apparently kitschy attempts to sound political. Professor Yunus and his team are not playing dice with the country. The country seems chaotic, but not entropic whatsoever. And how rational is it to doubt the patriotism of Professor Yunus?
His interview with the New Age editor, Nurul Kabir, reveals that humility and the confession of failure are foundational to leadership. Professor Yunus sounded ordinary and helpless, as Nurul Kabir raised concerns about his government. One was, interestingly, “civility.” Politicians generally sound stern and act rash. They are immune to transgression, as they often pretend. Professor Yunus and his advisors, on the other hand, are humble -- even apologetic.
Such a vision of politics empowers people to drive fascism out of the political equation. Accountability ushers in. Politics shifts from a business enterprise to a service sector that money can’t buy. A quote typically attributed to Mark Twain on American politics claims: “ We have the best government money can buy.” We had the best government before August 5, 2024, too. We no longer do. And not having that is an achievement. If someone has a kind word for Professor Yunus’s government on this, would he sound too gratuitous?
Perhaps, perhaps! On November 26, 2024, Professor Yunus’s government was severely strained, when a lawyer, Saiful Islam Alif, who was practicing at the Chittagong Court, was murdered by unidentified assailants. It was not a mere murder. It was, instead, a complex geopolitical plot designed by transnational forces sympathetic to Hasina’s regime. All hell could break loose in Bangladesh, because it had the tinder of a full-blown communal violence.
Professor Yunus said, “ I urge you to be patient.” People calmed down. The government became stern and strategic. A diplomatic démarche followed. The government didn’t cower to any external pressure. The law took its own course. The crisis didn’t worsen. Professor Yunus’s local credibility and global clout were instrumental in dealing with this crisis. He is potentially the wall. Walking through him is possible, but consequential.
Time, however, seems to have conspired against him, unfortunately. Democracy is not an imposition. It’s, instead, a cultural development. Fascists either co-opt or crush. They leave no space for dialogue or disagreement. Hasina’s regime was so aligned to these basics of fascism that we are already flung afar from a culture of democratic transition. Multiple institutions safeguard democracy. Hasina destroyed them all. She compulsively drove the country toward one-party, one-family, and one-slogan. She became the super-one, who, as her toadies would claim, was inevitable.
Hasina’s fall was as stunning as it was swift. Erasing her seems yet tough. During her tenure of approximately 16 years, 977 infrastructures and institutions were named after her, her family members, and party people. How can Professor Yunus’s government help the country transition to democracy in such a short tenure, when the country is so warped by and wrapped in the labels of fascism? His government promised reform, a fair election, along with bringing to justice the perpetrators responsible for the carnage during the July Revolution, 2024. His government never promised to change the labels of fascism and undo millions of other things that disrupt the focus of his government. He can’t not do these, either. Fascists leave nightmares for their successors!
They also leave people surviving the nightmares, as Hasina did. Shahidul Alam, the award-winning photographer and human rights activist, for example, is one. He was arrested in 2018 by the Hasina government under section 57 of the ICT Act 2006. Arundhati Roy wrote an open letter to Shahidul Alam, when he was already in jail for one hundred days, and she billed the ICT Act 2006, as a “catch-all, fishing trawler type of law.” In an interview with Al Jazeera, Shahidul Alam said, “It’s an unelected government, and they do not really have a mandate to rule,” when the country was convulsed by student protests. He “prejudices the image of the state.”
No estimate as of now reveals how many people languished and perished in jail or secret torture chambers (Aynaghar) because of prejudicing the image of the government during Hasina’s regime. Professor Yunus’s government decided in principle to repeal the Cyber Security Act (CSA), 2023, to replace it with the Cyber Protection Ordinance, 2025, which is the latest permutation of the ICT Act 2006. It’s a critical step toward freedom of speech. The government also honored Shahidul Alam with the Ekushey Padak, 2025. He criticizes Professor Yunus’s government for its lapses, but the government acknowledges that the criticism of the government is not a conspiracy against the country. It was so during the Hasina regime.
While Hasina sinks in history, optimists (or maybe just me) assert that Professor Yunus couldn’t have been more useful to Bangladesh than he is now. We have been able to avoid the bloodbath, which is almost always inevitable following a revolution. Our economy was on the brink; it has bounced back. We hardly have to depend on samizdat sources of information. Our press already seems more autonomous despite complaints of interventions. The country is functional and progressive amid unprecedented crises and challenges. Running a country is a serious thing, not a rookie’s business. Professor Yunus is that serious person. For all his shortcomings, on top of the inept advisers, he seems to have been running a successful government.
Congratulations, Professor Yunus. Yes, I mean it.
Dr Mohammad Shamsuzzaman is associate professor at the Department of English and Modern Languages in North South University, Bangladesh.