A Dangerous Game

The nice thing about blogging one's ignorance is that it summons people to one's aid. Since I posted yesterday on Kremlinology in Dhaka, I've had some helpful conversations. Unfortunately, I must perpetuate the syndrome of secrecy that I regretted yesterday: I can't tell you who I talked to. I guess that is common in journalism, but it makes me uncomfortable.For background, I suggest the Wikipedia article on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He is known as the father of Bangladesh---and the father of its current Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina. In 1970, when Bangladesh was still part of Pakistan, he led his Bangladeshi political party to a national-level election victory, but was prevented by the powers in the capital, Islamabad (in West Pakistan), from forming a government. That led him to declare Bangladesh's independence; to a guerrilla war; to a genocide within Bangladesh of perhaps 1 million people, perpetrated by West Pakistani soldiers and aided by some Bangladeshis; to decisive Indian intervention on behalf of Bangladesh; and to Sheikh Mujibur's founding presidency, which was marked by incompetence, corruption, autocracy, famine, and, in 1975, the assassination by junior army officers of the President, his personal staff, and his family. Only his two daughters, who were in West Germany, escaped that last bloody act. The eldest was Sheikh Hasina.The tragedy of this birth of a nation continued: more coups, counter-coups, assassinations, and lurches between military dictatorship and democracy. Since 1991, the country's politics have been dominated by two women: Sheikh Hasina and Begum Khaleda Zia, the widow of another hero of the revolution, who also served as president until he was assassinated. Each of the women seems to have alternated between prime ministership and prison (or at least house arrest). Each is drenched in allegations of corruption. No love is lost between them. One year ago, Hasina's government executed some of those accused in the assassination of her father.So: politics in Bangladesh is a dangerous game. Perhaps Muhammad Yunus now regrets trying to enter it in 2007.I am more convinced now that Hasina is after Yunus's scalp, at least political speaking. She is the daughter of the father of the country. She made peace with the "tribals" of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. He got the Nobel Peace Prize and the adulation of the world. She apparently believes she deserves both. The obvious way to attack Yunus is to finger him as a moneylender, and that is what she did last December. In Bangladesh's culture, as perhaps in most, resentment of people who use their control of land and credit to extort further wealth from the poor runs deep. She may not fear or resent Yunus's power as the head of bank with millions of members so much as his reputation, which could preserve his stature even if he left the Bank. If so, then the key for her is to undermine his reputation.Yesterday, Yunus appeared in a court room to respond to charges that in 2007 he described politicians as corrupt. The maximum sentence for this defamation: two years in prison. The case was filed almost exactly four years ago. Is it a coincidence that his court appearance was required now?Given how Hasina went from prison to landslide political victory in less than six months in 2008, I wonder whether martyring a perceived political rival is smart politics.I realized today that Yunus's New York Times op-ed can be seen as squarely responding to the political storm it does not mention. She says he's a moneylender. In the op-ed, he says he's not because the Grameen Bank is owned by its borrowers. Those investor-owned microcreditos in India, they're the moneylenders.I think that Hasina has had her eye on Yunus for a while. Last summer, before the controversies in Bangladesh and even India, I heard a rumor about government takeover of the Grameen Bank. In 2007, after Yunus tried to start that political party, Hasina quickly zapped him with the moneylending charge, saying she saw "no difference between usurers and those who accept bribes." Maybe her jealousy of his stature explains why she co-chaired the Microcredit Summit in 1997, when, as far as I know, she was hardly involved in microfinance otherwise.If she wants his scalp, can anyone stop her? I don't know. On Saturday morning, as Yunus's op-ed appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post covered the controversy, Secretary Clinton called Hasina to congratulate her on Bangladesh's progress toward the Millennium Development Goals and discuss other "matters of bilateral interest." Hillary has been friends with Yunus since 1986, when her former college roommate Jan Piercy introduced him to Hillary and Governor Clinton. Ever since, both Clintons have been big fans of microcredit.Bizarrely, atop the Prime Minister's Facebook page yesterday was a transcript of Saturday's conversation---or a purported one. I admit, I fell for it for a few minutes. It looks like it was posted by an anonymous Facebook account, then placed on her "wall." Still, in addition to being great scriptwriting, it shows you what some Bangladeshis surmise about the conversation:

Secretary: Madame Prime Minister, let me come to the core point for which I called you. As you have seen even Washington Post picked up your treatment to Dr.Yunus and Grameen Bank. I thought it is about time to tell you how upset we are in Washington DC. I am personally upset because Dr.Yunus has been a family friend to the Clintons long before his wining of Nobel Prize. President Clinton is equally upset. Hope you are aware how hard he worked to see Dr.Yunus gets this award. I know people may have personal issues, but when it comes to national icon like Dr.Yunus, I thought Bangladesh shouldn’t demonize country’s only Nobel Laureate. PM: Madame Secretary, please listen, please listen---- Secretary: Madame Prime Minister, please let me finish first. I hope you are aware that President Obama is a big fan of micro-credit. He is a fan of microfinance since his mother had her thesis on this subject. So, I am making this call to let you know how upset both of us---President Obama and I---at your continued effort to demonize Dr.Yunus. PM: Madame Secretary, I hope you are aware that it is not us who brought this issue. Norway is the first to complain about Dr.Yunus’s misplaced fund. After all, this is our domestic issue and Madame Secretary we will do it as per our own rules and regulations.

I guess the missing articles in Secretary's sentences---characteristic of Bangladeshi English---give it away!I have perhaps gained more insight into the government appointment I mentioned yesterday, of Muzammel Huq to chair the Grameen Bank. During his long career at the Bank he appears to have been demoted from Yunus's deputy to one of three General Managers, which may be why he left. For the government to put a former student and a former, demoted subordinate above Yunus is to subtly humiliate him, or at least signal him that it is time for his generation to move on. At 70, Yunus is well beyond the Bangladeshi government retirement age of 65.The political intrigue may be fascinating. But what matters is what happens to microfinance in Bangladesh and how that affects the poor. It's possible that if Hasina succeeds in forcing Yunus out of the Grameen Bank, she will stop there, even doing the bank some good. Perhaps the recently dismissed #2, Dipal Barua, so central to the "Grameen II" innovations, will succeed Yunus. Together, Barua and Huq would assure continuity with the past. The founder's syndrome would be treated. Yunus would go on being Yunus, a global figure who writes and speaks about social business. An inevitable succession would have been reasonably engineered.Or perhaps once successors indebted to the government for their new-found power begin to exercise it, they will be drawn inexorably into the ugly world of Bangladeshi politics: the government will want something in return. Perhaps Grameen will become a patronage and vote bank. Or would Hasina go so far as to cancel all Grameen loans, adding to her political capital while destroying the bank's with the stroke of a pen? (That would be expensive since she would need to keep Grameen's depositors whole.)I suppose we will see.