Hasina for EU to nominate Yunus for top WB job

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Thursday, 23 February 2012

Author / Source : Special Correspondent

Dhaka, Feb 22: Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday requested the European Union to nominate Bangladeshi Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus as the head of the World Bank, an official said. Hasina made this suggestion when a seven-member EU parliamentarian delegation, led by Jean Lambert, met the Prime Minister at her office. “Professor Muhammad Yunus is respected all over the world for his pioneering role in poverty alleviation through micro-credit schemes. His expertise on poverty alleviation could be an asset for the World Bank,” an offcial quoted the Prime Minsiter. Hasina said the EU could persuade the concerned authorities to elect Prof. Yunus as the WB president for the welfare of the world. The current five-year tenure of WB president Bob Zoellick will expire in June. Zoellick is unlikely to seek extension of his job for the next tenure.
When asked, Lambert said he would comment on the issue at a press conference scheduled for Thursday.
The WB said the selection process will be "merit-based and transparent", with all the executive directors able to nominate and consider all candidates. Nominations must be received by March 23, and the board will then draw a shortlist of prospects for a formal interview process.
Hasina's proposal came more than nine months after Yunus' resignation from top position of micro-lending Grameen Bank.
Bangladesh Bank sacked Yunus as Grameen did not seek permission to appoint him as its managing director beyond the retirement age of 60.
Yunus challenged Bangladesh Bank's decision in the High Court, which rejected his petition, and the Supreme Court also dismissed his arguments afterwards.
Grameen Bank came under criticism in a Norwegian documentary that accused Yunus of transferring USD 100 million to Grameen Kalyan, a non-profit sister entity of Grameen Bank, in 1996 without respecting procedures laid down by the donors.
He, however, denied the allegations.
Earlier, the Prime Minister had accused Yunus, who briefly set up his own rival political party in 2007, of using "tricks" to avoid taxes and "sucking blood from the poor" with his bank's loans.
The system, originally praised for reaching those excluded from normal commercial credit, has come in for criticism in recent years for encouraging debt and making excessive profits.
bdnews24.com adds: The move by the prime minister is surprising by any measure, given the animosity the two had developed after a 2010 Norwegian TV documentary revealed the country's aid agency Norad's displeasure in the late 1990s over Yunus' handling of aid money meant for Grameen Bank.
The Norad documents, classified till then, showed how Yunus was challenged by the then Norwegian ambassador to Bangladesh and how he sought to defend himself for failing to inform the donors before transferring the millions of dollars to a sister entity.
From the Norwegian point of view at that time, it was a breach of agreement on part of the recipient institution Grameen Bank and the ambassador lodged a strongly-worded complaint with the government's Economic Relations Division.
Yunus then travelled to Oslo to lobby the head of Norad and the matter was settled.
Years later when the documentary revealed those restricted documents, the Norwegian authorities, following another round of inquiry, said the matter had indeed been settled between the two sides.
Yunus, meanwhile, was named in 2006 winner of the Nobel prize along with Grameen Bank, founded in 1983 through a martial law ordinance. The poverty-fighting through micro-lending to the poor in Bangladesh was equated with peace-building work.
Sheikh Hasina, then opposition leader, was one of the first to congratulate the laureate and commend his work in micro-credit.
But Yunus’ botched attempt in 2007 to launch a political party allegedly with backing of the military-installed emergency government eroded much of his credibility with the political elite, and drew bi-partisan condemnation because of the fact he was allowed to carry out political activity while all major parties were banned from doing so.
Then the 2010 documentary triggered a new round of controversy over the Grameen way of lending and recovery, with the prime minister calling Yunus a blood sucker, a widely used reference to centuries-old tradition of usury in rural Bangladesh.
Some left or left-of-the-centre academics in Bangladesh and elsewhere have always questioned the efficacy of the micro-credit as an anti-poverty tool.
Chief executive since Grameen was founded originally with government support and ownership, Yunus was then questioned by the central bank for continuing in his job far beyond the retirement age for any executive in any such institution in Bangladesh.
Born on 28 June 1940, Yunus was nearly 71 when the Bangladesh Bank gave the notice in March 2011.
Civil servants would retire at 57, most public university teachers at 60, top judges at 67 and bank CEOs at 65, but the move was seen by many more as a witch-hunt than enforcement of a rule already ignored for long.
Yunus went to the court and lost a series of legal battles, finally in the Supreme Court, eventually losing his hold on the institution he is credited with building.
Hasina has been widely criticised in and outside the country for her handling of the Yunus affair as the micro-credit promoter used all his PR muscles to wage a campaign against her government and herself.
Many have even suggested that the World Bank’s refusal to go ahead with the Padma project had something to do with Yunus, who has allegedly used his powerful friends in Washington to lobby against Bangladesh’s case. Yunus has all along denied any such possibility.
Yunus’ personal friendship with the Clintons is quite well known, and there have been reports galore about Mrs Clinton pushing for a lenient approach from the Hasina government in the wake of the legal wrangling.
The latest Hasina move, given the context, will surely be seen as a masterstroke.