Chief Adviser tells Zeteo’s Mehdi Hassan
'There are also people who are saying, stay for 5 years, 10 years, 50 years'
Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus was in on an official visit to New York to attend the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly. On the sidelines of the session, he gave an interview to Mehdi Hassan of the digital media outlet Zeteo. In the interview, he spoke on a wide range of issues including the July Uprising, the fall of the Awami League government, his assumption of office as Chief Adviser to the interim administration, Sheikh Hasina’s refuge in India, the banning of Awami League’s activities, and the upcoming elections. In this interview, the Chief Adviser explained why it will take one and a half years to hold the election. Presented below, in a question-and-answer format, is that section of the interview, reproduced verbatim for readers of Prothom Alo.
Your interim government has been in power for a year now. You’ve said that elections will be held in February. It was going to be later, but you’ve moved it forward to February 2026.
Muhammad Yunus: First half of February because of the Ramadan.
Understood. But as you said at the start of this interview, a lot of people among the leaders they want action now. Not tomorrow, not six months from now. The critics say it’s too late. Six more months of waiting for elections is too long. People are growing restless. Why can’t we have an election earlier? In Nepal where the government was also ousted earlier this year, the interim leader has promised in Nepal to hold elections in just six months. Why has it taken Bangladesh or why will it take Bangladesh 18 months to have an election?
Muhammad Yunus: Sure. You said the people are saying why don’t take so much time. There are also people who say that stay five years, stay 10 years, stay 50 years. The people are saying all kinds of things. You stay. Why election? Who needs an election?
But those are people who don’t believe in democracy. The people who believe in democracy say, “Why can’t we have elections soon? What is the delay?”
Muhammad Yunus: It’s not about democracy when they say that. They talk about the good governance. So, we want to see corruption free governance. So, you stay on because we don’t want to get into the chaos after the election. So, all I am saying that it’s you gave one version get other version also. Whether which one version is stronger.
But do you want to tell our viewers today what is the reason it’s taken so long to get to elections?
Muhammad Yunus: Yeah. You gave example of Nepal. Nepal is a sort of what in our term is a caretaker government meaning that you are responsible to hold an election. So, probably that’s theirs.
Are you not a caretaker?
Muhammad Yunus: We are not. We are interim government. We are not; they did. Nobody defined how long we should be there. It’s our decision. How long we should be there.
But we are we have understanding that we have three tasks to perform. One’s the reform, another’s a trial, the last one is election. So, we are going to the reform agenda. This is a big agenda. Yes. Because if you just hold in an election. Same all stuff will happen again. Under different name, different pictures and so on. We need to form.
If you just hold the election, same repetition everything because the laws, rules, procedures is remain the same. So, one of the demands for the population led by the students is to reform. So make sure all the roots are taken up uprooted. So you have a different kind of structures so that this thing cannot come back. All the roots where roads, where fascism kept grips in, block them so that they cannot come in. So that is our agenda. It’s a big agenda. Then, the trial of the all the perpetrators of all the things which is a long procedure. So we have to set up a special court to do the trial and show the net result what’s coming out. Visible result coming out of the court system that is they’re being punished. Third one is the election. So, we have to go through all these three processes, not just one. In Nepal, they’re just holding the election.