'Threaten to stop helping Dhaka over Yunus'

Dhaka, Aug 15 (bdnews24.com)—A former American Ambassador has demanded that the US, along with European governments, threaten to stop helping Bangladesh for 'haunting' Nobel laureates Grameen Bank and Muhammad Yunus.  "The US and European governments will have to threaten to cut off bilateral assistance programs and other aid through multilateral institutions like the World Bank," William B Milam, who was posted in Dhaka two decades ago, wrote in an Op-ed post in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.  "By this time, Prime Minister Hasina is not inclined to listen to other governments and back off her determined course," he added.  Titled 'Dhaka Forecloses the Grameen Brand' the article says under the headline, "Bangladesh's government is taking over the pioneering microfinance bank, just as its founder feared."  Milam, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said at the start of the piece: "For the past 18 months in Bangladesh, the specter of a government takeover has haunted Grameen Bank and its founder, Nobel Prize winner Muhammed Yunus."  "Yunus was imagining the threat, but this month the Awami League government of Sheikh Hasina finally showed its hand," he wrote.  "Her cabinet decided to push the microfinance lender's elected board of trustees aside and give power to the government-appointed chairman to name a selection committee that will soon find a new managing director," he added.  The former US envoy to Bangladesh said in the article that the latest move of the government was 'a new turn in a campaign to vilify Mr. Yunus."  "Then it (the government) ginned up a controversy that micro lenders were "loan sharks," when the opposite is true: These banks give poor borrowers an alternative to usurious moneylenders," he argued.  Milam said the Cabinet's Aug 2 decision to investigate Yunus continuing beyond retirement age in the office of the Managing Director of Grameen Bank 'impugned Yunus's honesty'.  The Cabinet decided to alter the way the Bank appoints Managing Director and asked the revenue board for a report on whether he brought in any money from abroad as a wage earner and if so, if he was allowed to do so and whether he got any tax waiver on the amount.  "In 2006, both the Bank and Yunus were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for, as the Nobel committee put it, "their efforts to create economic and social development from below," Milam said.  He also said their effort 'to help the poor' undermined the 'culture of dependency' on the government 'that ties the poor to Bangladesh's political parties'.  He said he has known Yunus since the early 1990s and talked with him in May 2001.  "He had been under attack by the Awami League government for some time," he said.  Yunus tried to form a political party in 2007, angering the political parties in Bangladesh, especially Hasina's Awami League. But his bid was foiled apparently due to his 'controversial' ties with the US.  Milam said the politicians of Bangladesh 'wrongly' believed that he is a 'long-term threat to their interests' and said the 'personal animosity' between Hasina and BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia 'has made progress impossible'.  He expressed fear that 'corrupt government officials can loot the bank's substantial assets at will now'. "They can also tap its customer base of women borrowers and turn them into a serious vote bank by promises of loan reductions or write-offs.:  He said he had foreboded the Grameen Bank's 'future' after returning to Washington from Bangladesh in 2011.  "The South and Central Asian Bureau of the US State Department, however, did not share my concerns when I met with its officials…Now, more than a year later with news of the cabinet's decision, I am told they are "working on it."," he said.  Yunus had been removed from the bank last year following an order of the Bangladesh Bank for being over-aged to be Grameen Bank MD.  Before his removal, Hasina had observed that 'none can escape after sucking the blood of the poor'.  Her remarks followed a TV documentary aired in Norway. The documentary showed how Yunus channelled funds given for the poor shareholder-borrowers of the bank to one of its sister concern's which looks after the wellbeing of the officials of Grameen family, not the shareholder-borrowers.  Recently, people in Bangladesh responded positively to a call by Hasina to build the Padma bridge with the nation's own money after the World Bank had cancelled fund for the bridge alleging corruption in the project to build it.  There have been chatters that the global lender took the decision to cancel the fund following Yunus' 'campaign against funding it'.  bdnews24.com/gna/ost/bd/2310h