 A nasty piece of work |  |  |
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 |  Dr Yunus in Dhaka on Thursday. (PTI) f victory is defined as winning her showdown with Nobel laureate Dr Muhammad Yunus and ignominiously removing him from the head of Grameen Bank, then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina can pat herself on the back for a job well done. But it is worth asking: at what cost? The shameful campaign against Dr Yunus that she has pursued for the past few months has been so malicious and so delusional that it is hard to see how she ever recovers her credibility or reputation. In the end, it is testimony to the paucity of the charges against Dr Yunus that the government had to rely on the most absurd of minor technicalities as the slender reed on which to rest their case. He's too old to be MD of Grameen Bank? After months of vilifying him as the Bernie Madoff of Bangladesh who, in the Prime Minister's memorable phrase, was guilty of "sucking the blood of the poor" and ran Grameen like a Mafia don, in the end this is all they have on him? Please. It would be funny if it wasn't so disgraceful. Indeed, the government's case might have sounded more convincing had it not come hard on the heels of other similarly laughable charges that have hauled Dr Yunus into court twice in recent months in an obviously orchestrated campaign to harass and vilify him.
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| n fact, it is not clear that the Bangladesh Bank even has the power to remove Dr Yunus at all, let alone for so flimsy a reason as not getting prior Central Bank approval for staying as managing director past the mandatory age of retirement but pursuant to board approval. Certainly, in its unseemly haste to see the back of Dr Yunus, the government neglected all niceties of due process such as a show cause notice or hearing and, perhaps oddly for a party with such a nit-picky case, has itself acted in a bizarrely irregular fashion, flouting all prescribed norms for how to remedy the issue. Either way, the damage is done. The small-mindedness of the attack has left a sour taste in the nation's mouth, and even long-time supporters of the government have been sickened by the sordid spectacle of a witch-hunt against one of the nation's most esteemed citizens. The campaign against Dr Yunus has been a nasty piece of work and the entire nation has been demeaned by it, revealed before the world as a mean little fiefdom ruled with extraordinary venom and spite. But the damage done to the Prime Minister's reputation is surely even more telling. She has at a single stroke vindicated all of her detractors. Her pettiness, malevolence and refusal to listen to reason can now no longer be denied. Hasina has at a stroke alienated neutrals and even many allies and one-time supporters with her arrogance and high-handedness and given currency to every negative meme that the Opposition has ever spread about her. Perhaps none of this would matter so much if her government had been able to deliver on any other front, but with prices starting to spiral upwards, chronic power crisis, carnage in the stock market, and capital Dhaka's steady descent into a sweltering, choking nightmare, public confidence in the government is already in free-fall. Now when the Opposition complains about the bullying and harassment and abuse it suffers, it may well get a more respectful hearing from a public mindful of what has been dished out to Dr Yunus. And if a man of the eminence and reputation of Dr Yunus, who could muster the US Secretary of State to make a personal call to the Prime Minister on his behalf, can be dispatched with such contempt, what does that mean for the rest of us? The message has been sent loud and clear. This is not a government to take prisoners or make compromises. They cannot be reasoned with and they will not listen. It is their way or God help you. It is a grim outlook. The Prime Minister may have won the battle, but only by humiliating the nation and herself in the eyes of the world, and she has emerged an irretrievably diminished figure in the process. Never again will she be mistaken for a stateswoman. |
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