Making Sense of Bangladesh’s Political Transition

May 24, 2025
There was no template for Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus when he accepted the responsibility of leading Bangladesh’s interim government following Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s August 5 abdication in the face of a mass uprising. The IG’s immediate priority was to restore a sense of order from the chaos left by the collapse of Hasina’s autocratic regime. There was also the looming threat of an economic collapse as the extent of the previous regime’s looting and mismanagement became clear. Beyond this, the IG’s raison d’etre was to create conditions for the country’s first free and fair elections since 2008. To

Washington’s Deck with Mushfique

August 14, 2024

Elevator Speech for Bangladesh’s Interim Government

In the before times, I provided examples of the “elevator speeches” I would have given to former Bangladesh Prime Ministers Sheikh Hasina and Begum Zia and their colleagues in the run up to the January 2024 elections. In the same spirit, I have been thinking about what advice I would give to Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus and his Cabinet if I happened to have a few minutes alone with them on an elevator as they take on their new responsibilities. My sense is that the best I could do is highlight some of the most critical mistakes that the 2007-08 Caretaker