Yunus faces all round opposition in his bid to hand over part of Chittagong port to a foreign company

By Our Correspondent

Agartala, June 9, 2025

The Bangladesh chief advisor , head of the illegitimate interim government, Md Yunus’s unilateral decision to hand over control of the New-Mooring Container Terminal of Chittagong port to a foreign company has sparked all round opposition from the country’s political forces. In his televised address to the nation on last Friday Md Yunus had announced his decision to hand over control over a terminal in the port to a foreign party and urged upon people not to be swayed by opposition propaganda over the issue and resist them. However, Yunus’s stated objective is being seen only as the first step towards handing over control of the entire port to a foreign party.

This has sparked opposition from all the political forces with the BNP declaring that the move will be opposed tooth and nail as it will pose a serious security threat to Bangladesh. The BNP leadership is also planning to launch an agitational programme to forestall this container management hand-over programme of Yunus. Sources from across the border said that BNP’s labour arm ‘Shramik Dal’ has already organised a sit-in programme and demonstration against Yunus’s proposed hand-over of the container management in Chittagong port to foreign party. Senior BNP leader Ishraq Hossain has described this as a ‘conspiracy against the nation’ and proclaimed the BNP’s resolve to foil Yunus’s bid through mass agitation.

In a twist to the issue the army chief Wakar Uj Zaman has also ventilated his opinion on the issue saying this kind of decision should be taken by a ‘political’ (elected) government as assessing the opinion of local people on the sensitive issue will be required. The leader of the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB) Md Shah Alam has also opposed the move in an interaction with the media, asserting that unless the government changes its stand the left democratic forces will undertake a long march programme to mobilize public opinion on the issue. Significantly the Jamat-e-Islami and National Citizens Party (NCP) have also turned against the proposed hand-over but Yunus remains firm in his stand and is also showering praises on the foreign companies , saying they are doing it in many countries and nowhere has security of a country been jeopardized. But the issue is likely to snowball soon, sources added.

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