Priorities of the government

Recently, the Bangladesh Bank has removed Prof Muhammad Yunus from the post of Managing Director of Grameen Bank for alleged violation of regulations relating to age-limit of job and his appointment process. This really would have been a great example of trying to establish good governance in the country. But, whether the process was right or wrong is the concern, which is also a part of good governance. There could have been other ways to solve this problem. Mutual understanding could have eased pressure from both parties and lead to a more decent solution. Yes, one may rightly argue that the interest rates charged by the Micro Finance Institutions (MFIs) are high. The high risk premium for the default risk is not justified and the success ratio may not be as high as it is perceived. But MFIs' role in poverty alleviation and women empowerment cannot be ignored. They were also successful to channel the cash flow to the rural areas. So, Prof Yunus should also be credited for the successes, if you want to blame him for the flaws. Surely, the government cannot deny its failure to protect the general investors in recent stock market crash. Some of the comments made by responsible personnel of the government were confusing and to some extent misleading. Same thing is happening in the case of Prof Yunus. By doing so, we cannot improve the image of our nation. One of the prime reasons behind the failure of the opposition party, in the last general election was that they underestimated the power of the thoughts of the youths. In many ways median voting theorem can be applied for that incident. And the theory indicates warning signs for the present government. This government is not helping itself or getting popular with these types of activities. It is high time for the government to deal with more important issues like power generation before the summer comes, or how to handle the price hike issue in international commodity market, or the workers coming back from many countries because of recent domino effects in Middle East and Africa. Also, first time in the history of Bangladesh the current account balance is at a critical level which should be taken very seriously. The immediate priorities need to be the policies regarding remittance inflows, price hike in international commodity market and power generation in coming summer. Saief Mahmood E-mail: saief.mahmood@gmail.com