January 18, 2007	Thursday	Zilhaj 27, 1427

DHAKA: Bangladesh’s politicians are only in it for the money, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus said, but refused to reveal if he intended one day to seek the helm of the embattled democracy.

In an interview with AFP, “banker to the poor” Yunus also said his country was tired of months of unrest and blockades, with most people “jubilant” that a state of emergency had been imposed and elections cancelled.

“It’s about power, power to make money. There is no ideological thing, simply who gets the bigger booty,” Yunus said of the struggle between the main political parties to wrest control of the government.

“Nothing gets done unless you pay the bribe. It’s a part of life. It’s not the law or the rule anymore, it’s how you are paying,” he said, stressing that he was speaking of people on “both sides, not one side,” of the divide.

Interviewed at his Grameen Bank’s upmarket headquarters in Dhaka, a pile of economics books stacked behind him on the shelves of his plain office, Yunus looked relaxed but chose his words carefully.

Yunus, along with his Grameen bank, brought pride to Bangladesh last year when he was awarded the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work to provide “micro-credit” -- or small loans -- to millions of poor people.

Politically, however, the country is chronically instable.

The latest in a long series of battles between the main parties -- the outgoing Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of Khaleda Zia and the Awami League of Sheikh Hasina Wajed -- has brought the country to its knees by months of strikes, blockades and street battles.

The Awami League accused the BNP of attempting to stay on top through vote rigging during elections that were supposed to have been held next week.

Their decision to boycott the polls and the threat of yet more violence prompted President Iajuddin Ahmed last week to cancel the elections, impose an emergency and appoint a new interim government tasked with organising new polls.

“Free and fair” elections seem to be months away -- leaving Bangladesh straying dangerously close to the edges of its democratic constitution, given that the elections should technically have been held by the end of January.

Yunus said this hiccup in the democratic process -- where several fundamental rights have also been suspended under the emergency -- was more of a relief than cause for alarm.

“People are not only happy, they are jubilant. They are tired of the situation,” said Yunus, one of Bangladesh’s few public figures seen to be outside of politics.

“If the emergency was not brought in, we would have a series of blockades and shut downs and all kinds of violence,” he said. “Democracy has not been frozen. As long as we are in the constitution we have an ultimate law, let’s not get outside of that.” The silver-haired economics professor revealed last week he had turned down an offer to take the helm of the interim government -- an unenviable position that would involve having to clean up an electoral bureaucracy riddled with corrupt officials.

“It is sensitive, I didn’t want to get into that. I didn’t like the undefined nature of the job,” he explained, adding that he also had “plenty of work to do” at his bank.—AFP