Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus will return to Bangladesh to be sworn in as the head of an interim government this week.
Bangladesh’s parliament was dissolved on Tuesday after Sheikh Hasina – the country’s leader for 15 years – fled the country and resigned.
The 76-year-old prime minister and her sister took a military helicopter to West Bengal in India in the wake of protests where more than 300 were killed.
After vowing there would be a solution to the crisis as soon as Tuesday night, Bangladesh’s army chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman said Mr Yunus would be sworn in as head of a new interim government.
He said he was “confident” the Nobel laureate would help the country toward a democratic process, and that Mr Yunus would receive help from “all sections” of the government.
Speaking to reporters at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport before boarding a flight to Dhaka, Mr Yunus said: “Let us make the best use of our new victory.
“I’m looking forward to going back home and seeing what’s happening there, and how we can organise ourselves to get out of the trouble that we are in.”
The Nobel laureate is ‘looking forward’ to resolving the ‘trouble’ in his country. Pic: Reuters
Yunus sentence overturned
When asked about when new elections would take place, Mr Yunus put his hands up and said: “I’ll go and talk to them. I’m just fresh in this whole area.”
Mr Yunus – who won his Nobel prize in 2006 for founding the Grameen Bank and pioneering microfinance to help those in poverty – has been the favourite of student protesters to head a new interim government.
Sheikh Hasina’s administration began a series of investigations into Mr Yunus after she came to power in 2008. He was sentenced to six months in jail in January for labour law violations, and was then granted bail.
A court in Bangladesh overturned his conviction for failing to create a welfare fund for employees of Grameen Telecom on Wednesday.
Protesters called for Mr Yunus to be made head of an interim government. Pic: Reuters
The protests originally started as people sought to oppose a quota system for government jobs.
But the high death toll from clashes between police and anti-government activists triggered more protests demanding accountability from the government for the violence.
Read more on Sky News:
Three men jailed after riots – as mugshots released
Team GB runner confronts French athlete after collision
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
Former PM speaks after release
It comes as opposition leader and former prime minister Khaleda Zia made her first public speech since 2018, after President Mohammed Shahabuddin ordered she be released from house arrest.
Zia was convicted by Sheikh Hasina’s government on corruption charges.
Speaking from a hospital bed via video link, she told supporters in Dhaka: “No destruction, no anger, and no revenge, we need love and peace to rebuild our country.”
Khaleda Zia made her first speech in years via video link in Dhaka. Pic: Reuters
The former prime minister added: “I have been released now. I want to thank the brave people who were in a do-or-die struggle to make possible the impossible.
“This victory brings us a new possibility to come back from the debris of plunder, corruption and ill-politics. We need to reform this country as a prosperous one.”