---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Abdul Mannan Azad <mannanazad@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 7:54 PM
Subject: [bangla-vision] AFP on Nobel winner Dr.Yunus
From: Abdul Mannan Azad <mannanazad@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 7:54 PM
Subject: [bangla-vision] AFP on Nobel winner Dr.Yunus
Bangladesh's Nobel winner Yunus in trouble at home
(AFP)DHAKA — Nobel prize winner and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus is in trouble in Bangladesh -- the price for crossing the country's powerful Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, observers say.
Lauded internationally for his innovative work making small loans to poor entrepreneurs, at home he has been dragged to court to answer charges of defamation and faces a government probe into his bank.
The two blows in quick succession over the last month have led to speculation -- denied by the government -- that his woes stem from personal differences with Hasina, who said in December that microfinanciers were "sucking blood from the poor."
M.M. Akash, a commentator and economics professor at Dhaka University, said Yunus's problems are rooted in events in 2007, a tumultuous period in the history of the impoverished South Asian country.
"Hasina and Yunus appeared to be on good terms before he floated the idea for a political party," he said. "That was a huge political blunder and he is now paying the price for it."
After months of political turmoil, including violent street clashes between supporters of the two main parties, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and the Awami League, the military seized power in January 2007 in a bloodless coup.
A month later, Yunus announced plans to set up his own party, the Nagorik Shakti or Citizen Power, which the septuagenarian "banker to the poor" said would change Bangladesh's confrontational political culture."My politics will be the politics of unity and peace to establish honesty in politics and to change the fate of the nation," Yunus said at the time, offering an alternative vision to the country's two main parties.
By May 2007, however, he had abandoned his plans and the following year in December 2008, Hasina's Awami League returned to power in a landslide victory."The ruling party is not happy with him. There is an attempt to malign him personally so as to send him the message that he is not indispensable," Salauddin Aminuzzaman, political science professor at Dhaka University said.
"They want to remind him: don't even think about politics," he told AFP, adding that most Bangladeshis thought Yunus's legal woes were a case of Hasina "settling old scores."
The first sign of problems was in November 2010 when a Norwegian documentary accused Yunus of misusing Norwegain aid money given to his Grameen Bank in 1996.
This was investigated by Oslo, which cleared Yunus, but the issue was taken up by the Bangladeshi government and led to the announcement of a separate probe into Grameen.
Hasina accused Yunus of pulling a "trick" to avoid tax and online newspaper, BDnews24.com, owned by one of her senior economics advisers, seized on the story and ran a string of articles accusing Yunus of "syphoning" off aid.
Separately, a long-dormant defamation lawsuit lodged in 2007 against Yunus by a low-ranking official of a left-leaning party allied to hers came back to life, leading to a brief court appearance on Tuesday.
Yunus stands accused of defaming the country's political class through an interview with AFP in 2007 in which he said politics in Bangladesh was about "the power to make money."
The government maintains the Grameen Bank probe is not directed at Yunus and denies claims of a political vendetta."There is no politics behind this investigation. Yunus wanted to launch a party, but he never did," Hasina's economic adviser, Mashiur Rahman, told AFP Wednesday.
"We are simply investigating whether anything is amiss in Grameen Bank's operations. Yunus as such is not the primary objective of the investigation," he added.
M.A.Mannan AZAD
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Palash Biswas
Pl Read:
http://nandigramunited-banga.blogspot.com/
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