Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus said Saturday he feared for the survival of his pioneering microlender Grameen Bank, days after his removal as its chief was upheld by the country’s highest court.
The 2006 Nobel winner said the future of the Grameen Bank — the world’s largest microlender which he founded — is at stake as the government meddles in the affairs of the bank, 96.5 percent owned by poor women.
“I am humbly appealing to all for the protection and independence of Grameen Bank and the protection of poor women who are working very hard to stand on their feet,” Yunus, 70, said in his first reaction after the court verdict.
“There is growing doubt as to whether any civil society effort can survive and retain its character and independence in this politically influenced environment,” he said in a statement.
Supporters say Yunus — known as “the banker to the poor” — has been victimised by Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, whom he crossed in 2007 when he briefly set up a political party during a period of military rule.
Yunus was first removed as head of the microlender on March 2 in a power struggle with the government for control of the bank — but he defied the order, returning to work and lodging a legal appeal against the sacking.
But the Supreme Court ruled that Grameen Bank was a government institution, not a private bank as Yunus and his legal team had maintained, meaning that Yunus must abide by the state’s mandatory retirement age of 60.
The ruling put an end to his last hopes to stay at helm of the microlender which has lent more than $10 billion to 8.3 million mostly rural women since it was set up in 1993.
Yunus and Grameen Bank jointly won the Nobel peace prize in 2006 for creating “economic and social development from below”.
The microfinance model has been copied in developing countries around the world and Yunus’s sacking was widely criticised by international supporters and the United States government.
