Students will form parties: Professor Yunus
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
Photo: Collected
In an interview with the Financial Times, Professor Muhammad Yunus, the chief adviser to the interim government, said that students will form parties. For this purpose, they are organizing people across the country.
The chief adviser recently visited Davos, Switzerland, on the occasion of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. At that time, he spoke in a podcast hosted by Gideon Rachman, the chief foreign affairs commentator of the British media outlet Financial Times. The conversation has been published in written form in the podcast called ‘Rachman Review’.
In a written conversation on the podcast on Thursday (January 30), Professor Muhammad Yunus, in response to a question about the upcoming national elections in Bangladesh, said that the two possible times for the elections he mentioned are good times because he is maintaining national unity. He does not want to deviate from it.
During the discussion in this regard, Professor Yunus said, ‘One possibility is that the students will form a party themselves. In the beginning, when they were forming the advisory council meeting, I took three students to my advisory council. I said, if they can give “life” to the country, then they can sit on the advisery council and decide what they are doing to give life. They are doing a good job. Now the students are saying, why you don’t form your own party, we will take a chance. They said, you have no chance; you won’t even have a single seat in the parliament. Why? Because, no one knows you. I told them, the entire nation knows them. Let’s give them a chance to do whatever they want. So, they will do it.’
Professor Muhammad Yunus said, ‘They may get separated during the party formation process. This is also a danger. Because, if they start politics, all kinds of politicians will mix with them. So we don’t know whether they will be able to keep themselves away from the politics in our country or not. There is such an opportunity that we have to take. But the students are ready. They are campaigning. They are organizing people across the country.’
In the podcast, the host asked at this stage, ‘I want to draw your attention to one of the things that the Indians are saying. They are saying that the situation in Bangladesh is very delicate. Professor Yunus may or may not be right. But there are Islamists there who are going to take control of the country. What do you say about that?
Then Professor Muhammad Yunus said, ‘We do not see such signs. At least I do not see any signs now. The youth are really committed. They have no connection with anything bad or have no personal desire to organize their own political identity. They are forming political parties or joining politics in this situation. This is necessary. Because, what they have achieved with their blood, they have to protect it. Otherwise, it will be taken away by those people who are looking for an opportunity to repeat everything like the previous administration and others. This is our political environment in Bangladesh. So they are trying to protect it. So I would say, the students will have clear intentions.’