Did the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet – not a jazz band, by the way – wonder if they were being pranked when the Nobel Peace Committee called them up on Friday to tell them they had won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2015?
Very few punters had put money on them to win the prize. The smart money was on much bigger names such as Pope Francis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US Secretary of State John Kerry.
So the quartet probably was not expecting that call. Like quite a few other winners of the Nobel prizes. The problem is that the Nobel committees are so secretive. There are no official nominations, no public shortlist of candidates and the Nobel officials only call the winners on the day the winner is announced.
The Wall Street Journal recounts how University of Massachusetts Medical School biologist Craig Mello who got the call at 4.30am (because of the time difference between Sweden and the US) one day in 2006.
His wife told him not to answer because she thought it was a prank. Then the phone rang again and this time Dr Mello picked up. “I’m glad they didn’t just move down the list,” he said.
Jokes aside, the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet – which comprises the Tunisian Employers Union, the Tunisian General Labour Union, the Tunisian Human Rights League and the National Bar Association – are worthy winners because they made a major contribution towards ensuring Tunisia made a successful transition – the only one so far – in the Arab Spring.
It was because of that wider context in North Africa and the Middle East – so much at the heart of global turmoil today – that the Nobel peace committee chose the quartet, not only as “an encouragement to the Tunisian people” and “an example to be followed by other countries”.
It had helped steer the country towards democracy after the 2011 Jasmine Revolution when it was “on the brink of civil war”. The quartet helped to broker a deal in 2013 between the secularists and the Islamist-led government. It intervened at an incendiary moment when the assassinations of two secular politicians by Islamist extremists threatened to scupper negotiations towards a new democratic transition.
It played a decisive role in effecting a compromise between the secularists and Islamists which put the constitutional negotiations back on track and led to elections.
The secularists and Islamists now serve together in a coalition government, by sharp contrast with all the other Arab Spring countries where they have been killing each other in ever-larger numbers in continuing civil wars. Or where, as in Egypt, the popular revolution has simply been reversed and the prior authoritarian militaristic government has been reinstated.
The quartet is not the only rather surprising winner resulting from the Nobel peace committee’s interest in being an agent of history – in using the prize not only as a reward for past achievements but as an incentive for future ones.
The award of the 2009 prize to US President Barack Obama arguably contained more of the latter than the former motivation. Obama himself – like his countryman Dr Mello – also seemed rather surprised to get the call from the committee.
After all he had just taken office, though on the promise of pulling the US out of his predecessor’s wars. Has he delivered on the promise which the Nobel committee pre-emptively rewarded? Perhaps. He has withdrawn US troops from Iraq and Afghanistan – and buried the hatchet with Cuba – though the US is back at war with IS. That, unfortunately, probably just goes with the job.
Back in 1993, the committee similarly gave the prize jointly to Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, who had already walked a long road together – but not all the way – towards a reconciliation of the crisis.
Who could say for sure that the prize didn’t help to push them the extra yard across the finishing line?