Bangladesh Nobel winner plans political movement

Bangladesh's Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus has said he planned a nationwide movement to find honest and capable candidates to run for parliament elections next year.

Yunus, speaking to reporters late on Tuesday, said he could form a political party, if needed, as part of a campaign to cleanse the impoverished nation's politics, riven by infighting.

“I am planning to start a movement to find honest and capable people to contest elections,” Yunus said just before he left for South Korea.

Yunus and the Grameen Bank he founded were awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for grassroots efforts to lift millions out of poverty that earned him the nickname “banker to the poor”. His pioneering model went on to be copied in over 100 countries from the United States to Uganda.

But Yunus turned down calls to lead an independent caretaker administration that will supervise the elections in January after Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia's government steps down later this month.

“I won't accept an offer to become the chief of a caretaker authority,” he said. The country's main political parties are finding it difficult to agree to the caretaker authority's composition. The ruling party and opposition groups have been locked in talks for weeks trying for a consensus on electoral reform. “Yunus is the best neutral person in the country and symbol of unity,” said Mohammad Ataur Rahman, head of the Bangladesh Political Science Association. Bangladesh has seen a series of often violent opposition-led strikes and shutdowns in recent months, and there are fears the violence could escalate if the two sides do not reach a consensus on the interim government.