BBC South Asia correspondent, Dhaka
BBCBangladesh’s meantime chief says he felt “dazzled” when requested to pull price nearest long-serving top minister Sheikh Hasina used to be pushed from energy terminating presen.
“I had no idea I’d be leading the government,” Muhammad Yunus informed the BBC. “I had never run a government machine before and had to get the buttons right.
“As soon as that settled ailing, we began setting up issues,” the Nobel-prize winning economist said, adding that restoring law and order and fixing the economy were priorities for the country.
It’s unclear if Hasina, who fled into exile in India, and her party will participate in elections Yunus hopes to hold later this year. She is wanted in Bangladesh for alleged crimes against humanity.
“They [the Awami League] must make a decision in the event that they need to do it, I can’t make a decision for them,” said Yunus in an interview with the BBC at his official residence in Dhaka.
“The election fee makes a decision who participates within the election.”
He mentioned: “Vacation and sequence is essentially the most noteceable factor, and the economic system. It’s a shattered economic system, a devastated economic system.
“It’s as if there’s been some terrible tornado for 16 years and we’re trying to pick up the pieces.”
Sheikh Hasina used to be elected top minister in 2009 and dominated Bangladesh with an iron fist. Contributors of her Awami League executive ruthlessly cracked ailing on dissent. There have been frequent allegations of human rights violations and the homicide and jailing of political competitors occasion she used to be top minister.
A student-led rebellion compelled Ms Hasina from administrative center in August. On the behest of protesters, Yunus got here again to Bangladesh to manage the unused meantime executive.
He says he’ll secure elections between December 2025 and March 2026, relying on how briefly his executive can institute reforms he believes essential for sovereign and truthful elections.
“If reforms can be done as quickly as we wish, then December would be the time that we would hold elections. If you have a longer version of reforms, then we may need a few more months.”
Reuters“We are coming from complete disorder,” he mentioned, regarding the violent protests that engulfed Bangladesh terminating summer time. “People getting shot, killed.”
However virtually seven months on, public in Dhaka say regulation and sequence has now not but been restored, and that issues aren’t getting higher.
“Better is a relative term,” he mentioned. “If you are comparing it to the last year for example at the same time, it looks okay.
“What is occurring presently, is not any other than any alternative life.”
Yunus blames many of Bangladesh’s current woes on the previous government.
“It’s not that i am supporting that these items will have to occur. I’m announcing that, it’s important to believe, we aren’t a super nation or a super town that all of sudden we made. It’s a continuum of the rustic that we inherited, a rustic that’s been working for plenty of, a few years.”
Victims of Sheikh Hasina’s brutal regime remain angry. Thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets in recent months, demanding she be prosecuted for the deadly crackdown on student protesters.
A court in Bangladesh has issued a warrant for her arrest, but India has yet to respond.
Now, under Yunus’s leadership, there are questions about the safety of those belonging to Sheikh Hasina’s political party.
In February, several homes of Awami League members, including that of the founder of Bangladesh – Hasina’s late father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman – were vandalised and set on fire after her supporters were told she would give an address on YouTube.
In a post on social media, the Awami League accused the interim government of justifying violence.
When asked by the BBC about claims by members of the Awami League that Bangladesh is not safe for them, Yunus was quick to defend his government.
“There’s a court docket, there’s a regulation, there’s a police station, they may be able to travel and whinge, sign up their grievance,” he said. “You simply don’t travel to a BBC correspondent to whinge, you travel to the police station to whinge and spot whether or not the regulation is taking its route.”
The Trump administration’s decision to cut foreign aid and effectively end almost all programmes funded by the US Agency for International Development will have an impact on countries like Bangladesh.
“It’s their determination,” says Yunus.
“It’s been useful. As a result of they’re doing issues that we needed to get achieved, like combating corruption and such things as that, which we couldn’t manage to pay for straight away.”
The United States is the third largest supplier of official development assistance to Bangladesh. Last year the US committed $450m in foreign aid.
When asked how it will make up the shortfall, Yunus says “When it occurs, we can build do.”