Obama's tricky prize
THE Norwegian Nobel Committee has stunned the world with its announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009. Of the 205 names in the list, US president obviously was the most prominent personality in the world to draw the attention of the Nobel Committee. But his being the most powerful and illustrious global celebrity apart, many have questioned the wisdom of the Nobel Committee for its decision to exalt Barack Obama so early in his career in the US presidency as he is yet to deliver the promises he made to the people of the US and the world at large. The former Polish president and winner of the Peace prize in 1983, for instance, exclaimed in reaction to Obama's luck saying, "So soon? Too early… He is only beginning to act." In a similar vein the former US ambassador to UN John Bolton called "it is indicative of the politicisation of the Nobel Peace prize process. This just carries it to the n-th degree." On the other hand, the 2002's Nobel peace winner former Democratic US president Jimmy Carter welcomed the Nobel Prize committee's decision as "a bold statement of international support for his vision and commitment."
So worldwide the reaction to Obama's getting the peace prize has been a mixed one.
However, the most interesting part of the controversy over the Obama Peace Nobel is not so much the recipient, as the giver of the prize that has been drawing negative publicity.
Seeing that the winner of the award is none other than the US president should be enough reason for any negative publicity. But what was really in the Norwegian Nobel Committee's mind when they chose Obama, the fourth US president after Theodore Roosevelt (1906), Woodrow Wilson (1919) and Jimmy Carter (2002), for the honour can be best understood from the words of Thorbjorn Jagland, the Nobel Committee's new chairman in an interview after announcement of the 2009's winner: "It's important for the committee to recognise people who are struggling and idealistic, but we cannot do that every year. We must from time to time go into the realm of realpolitik. It is always a mix of idealism and realpolitik that can change the world." Reassuring the sceptics for their fear that the Nobel Committee's 'integrity' itself might have been at stake for this year's choice of the prize's recipient or that the prize may become an 'embarrassment' for Obama in case he gets bogged down in a war like it happened during Johnson presidency (Lyndon B. Johnson) in Vietnam, he added saying that, Willy Brandt hadn't achieved much in 1971 when he got the prize for his 'Ostopolitik,' a policy of reconciliation with the communist East. 'But a process had started that ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall,' he argued. He further extended the analogy to the case of Mikhail Gorbachev's getting the same award in 1990 for launching his 'perestroika.'
So Barack Obama's challenge of changing the world fits well into the pattern of the paths treaded by Brandt and Gorbacheve in changing the Europe, Jagland stressed.
In fact, the Nobel Prize committee's choices for the peace prize had never been without any controversy. The world was never united in the way it viewed awarding of the Prize. In the past when the world was divided between two camps led by two superpowers it was not only peace prize, but other Nobel Prizes including, for example, that for literature, too, drew criticism from their opponents for being politically motivated. Even today different cross-sections of the population in the same country view the award-giving procedure differently. So, one is hardly surprised at President Obama becoming the butt of unkind remarks from many personalities and quarters from across the globe. But even before the outside reactions both adulatory and critical started to pour in, what the prize-winner himself said about the event is interesting: "To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures… I will accept this award as a call to action…"
It was of course an expression of his modesty when President Obama uttered those words. But what one cannot deny is that, surprised he certainly was. He need not have been that way, though, after achieving the great feat of becoming the first black president of USA! And the Oslo Nobel Committee by announcing the 2009 peace prize has actually awarded the American people more than Obama for the historic verdict to elect the first African American as their president.
Syed Fattahul Alim is a senior journalist.
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