The government has threatened legal action against the Yunus Centre, unless the institution, which promotes and disseminates Prof Muhammad Yunus’ philosophy, withdraws its recent statement regarding the prime minister, reports BSS.
The statement, published in the daily Ittefaq and The Daily Star on Wednesday, is “totally a lie, confusing and ill-motivated,” Prime Minister’s Press Secretary Abul Kalam Azad said in a press release Thursday.
While condemning the “propaganda,” the government hoped that the Yunus Centre would withdraw it and “in the future, will refrain from spreading such ill-motivated lies. Or, the government will be compelled to take legal action against the propaganda and lies of the Yunus Centre,” the statement from the Prime Minister’s Office said.
The government also protested a claim that it was spending money and making the effort to prove that Prof Yunus is a fraud.
“The government has no intention to demean Nobel laureate Prof Yunus. Rather, Yunus Centre is spreading propaganda, and it has disgraced the government and Prof Yunus. Hence, the government is protesting the Yunus Centre statement, which is prepared based on unconfirmed news,” the government statement said.
Yunus Centre in its rejoinder claimed that according to several newspapers, the prime minister, at a high-level meeting with the party’s senior leaders and cabinet members on July 11, “raised a number of complaints about Prof Yunus which are completely false.”
The PMO statement said since there was no representative from print or electronic media present at the private meeting on July 11, the news published the next day in different newspapers was not credible. Moreover, the news reports did not quote someone present at the meeting, held at Ganabhaban – the prime minister’s official residence.
Yunus Centre said as the government did not disown the news reports, they took the prime minister’s comments seriously.
However, the government Thursday said it did not feel it was necessary to protest the “unconfirmed and presumed news reports.”
The government also dismissed the concern of the Yunus Centre that the news reports on the prime minister’s remarks would affect Bangladesh’s relation with Norway and the US. “Bangladesh’s relation with these countries is not so frail that it would be damaged over baseless news reports.”
The PMO press release also mentioned that publication of news reports based on unconfirmed sources is “against the ethics of journalism, ill-motivated and unwanted.”
