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Why is the government damaging the high reputation of Prof. Yunus?
IT is time for all conscious citizens to demand from the government why it has chosen to damage the image and high reputation that Professor Yunus had earned nationally and internationally. Long before he and Grameen Bank received the Nobel Prize, he had
earned respect within the country for the innovative mode of providing credit to landless women, starting from modest beginnings in the Chittagong University Campus. He had tirelessly worked to disseminate these ideas to develop the organisational base starting from a handful of units in some thanas to a national scale operation in
The success of the initiative had led to the emer-
gence of Grameen Bank. This was followed by an even more bold initiative of vesting the ownership of the Bank (97% of its shareholdings) in its women shareholders, and for them to elect its Board of Directors. This was widely acclaimed within the country and internationally and earned the Nobel Prize.
The latest in a series of actions directed at Professor Yunus and the Grameen Bank raises serious questions which must be answered by the government. The first such action was a letter from the Bangladesh Bank which charged that his appointment eleven years earlier had been improper because he had passed the official retirement age. Prof. Yunus promptly filed a writ petition submitting with it documents proving that his appointment had been duly made with approval from the Board of Directors. The directors included three government nominees, secretaries to different ministries. The Bangladesh Bank was fully informed of his appointment and dealt with him for the next 11 years as managing director.
Prof. Yunus was denied justice as the High Court refused to admit his writ petition, bizarrely stating that Prof. Yunus did not have "locus standi" to do so! In other words, they held that he was not eligible to file the petition, because he could not show how he had been aggrieved by the Bangladesh Bank's decision, although he had been removed from service. When Prof. Yunus sought permission from the Appellate Division, our highest court, to appeal against this indefensible order, the Court quite inexplicably denied this.
The government did not file a single document in response to the documents filed by Prof. Yunus. Instead, it began to direct misleading and baseless statements against Prof. Yunus. In court when the government's lawyers falsely asserted that Prof. Yunus was trying to maintain his managing directorship beyond the age of retirement, he filed his letter to the finance minister written two years earlier asking for a search committee to find a successor for him. He did this, though the Board had earlier clearly taken a resolution that there was no retirement age for his position, and that he should continue in office until they decided otherwise.
The Board of Directors includes nine rural women members. They have been elected by eight million borrower members of Grameen Bank. These women directors had also gone to court to challenge the legality of the Bangladesh Bank's letter. Incredibly, the court also rejected their petition, noting that they had no "locus standi!" This meant that the court said that they could not challenge an order although it directly interfered with their powers to appoint a managing director. The Appellate Division again refused them permission to appeal against this order.
The judge who made these orders in the High Gourt soon afterwards leap-frogged dozens of judges of the High Court Division to be elevated to be a judge of the Appellate Division.
The Government has since then taken steps for which it owes the people of Bangladesh proper explanations.
It has established a "'Commission of Enquiry" to enquire into Grameen Bank and its associated companies. We should ask the government to explain the basis for establishing such a Commission and to show us the materials based on which it took this decision. As citizens we have a right to this informa-
tion and we must insist on this as a right to information under the law.
While this Commission is ongoing, and before it has finalised it report, the government has taken another sudden action to push through and obtain cabinet approval to amend the Grameen Bank law. This has been done to change the provisions of the law regarding appointment of its Board and the powers of the chairman. The main purpose of this appears to be to over-rule the 9 women Board Members who have repeatedly insisted in Board meetings that Prof. Yunus has to be part of any search committee to look for his successor. The cabinet has also reportedly discussed taking action to make Prof. Yunus account for funds received from Grameen Bank after he had reached retirement age. These are attempts to damage his reputation and are in the nature of defamatory innuendos.
We need to ask why such a sustained attack is being made on Grameen Bank institutionally and Prof. Yunus personally? Why is it a priority for the government to damage Professor Yunus' reputation and to affect the proper, democratic functioning of the Grameen Bank by curtailing the rights of the shareholders and their elected directors.
We need these answers precisely because the government has given single-minded priority to target Prof. Yunus and the Grameen Bank while major enquiries which have been demanded and which the government is obliged to initiate are going unanswered. These include inquiries regarding the share market scam, the allegations of corruption arising from the current prosecution of railway ministry officials and serious allegations of corruption relating to other projects, including Padma Bridge. Citizens should raise our voices to say that attempts to damage the Grameen Bank and the reputation of its founder can only damage the country itself and
deprive us of our right to uphold our national image, and protect our national assets.
I hope that Members of Parliament will not remain as silent onlookers as the executive branch acts grossly arbitrarily. They cannot allow a matter of national importance to be dealt with summarily by an Ordinance. Parliament must be given an opportunity to debate this matter and a Parliamentary Committee should hold a public hearing regarding the need for the proposed amendments. This would reveal that it is against the public interest to restrict the powers of elected Board Members to appoint a managing director and to impose political and bureaucratic control over Grameen Bank.
The writer is an eminent Jurist and one of the framers of our Constitution.
(This is the full text of the statement made yesterday (Aug 4) by Dr. Kamal Hossain.)