Directors protest

The Grameen Bank (GB) board of directors has protested the government's move to elect a new board of the microlender by October 5, terming it "a conspiracy to destroy" the bank.
"We, the elected directors, strongly protest the current government's conspiracy to destroy the Grameen Bank and demand that the existing system, through which the members of the bank have been electing their directors for more than three decades, be retained," said a GB statement signed by one of its directors Tahsina Khatun yesterday.
On April 6, the government issued a rule that transfers the power to appoint members of the GB board from the microlender itself to Bangladesh Bank, a move that sends the embattled organisation further into the state's grip.
According to the new rule, all the GB branches have been divided into nine constituencies and direct elections will be held in the constituencies under the supervision of the central bank.
The statement said that the directors had been opposing the new system of election from the very beginning.
"It's not difficult for anyone to understand that the hasty move to elect representatives through a new system before the tenure of existing elected representatives expires is ill-motivated," it read.
If the government wanted to conduct an election comprising 84 lakh member voters of 2,500 branches simultaneously, like the way it held the parliamentary elections or the upazila polls, it would create anarchy and the GB board election would take a political shape like the local elections, the directors said.
"Infighting, money game, backstabbing -- all these will create factions and trigger violence among the GB members surrounding the polls. There will be nothing called discipline in this Nobel Peace Prize-winning organisation," the statement read.
It also goes on to say that a board, elected through the new system, will undoubtedly turn into a weapon of corruption and abuse of power.
They also warned that the 84 lakh members of the GB will unitedly resist "the evil move to destroy the bank" if the government doesn't back off and retain the existing system of electing the board members.