Nobel Prize for four

It was befitting that the Nobel Peace Prize for the solitary feel-good story of Arab Spring went to the ‘National Dialogue Quartet’ of a trade union leader, a business person, a lawyer and a human rights activist, instead of the Islamist party Ennhada and the current President Beji Caid Essebsi. This is because everything Tunisia did after West Asia and North Africa underwent political convulsions was different from its neighbours. Tunisians shunned the Western penchant for naming people-led political transformations after flowers by dubbing theirs “the Revolution of Freedom and Dignity”. Ennhada, unlike its Muslim Brotherhood compatriot in Egypt, did not monopolise the process of making the Constitution.

The civil society also did not disengage after Mr and Mrs Ben Ali fled with two tonnes of gold. Instead, unlikely comrades such as Islamists and union leaders kept the conciliation process alive and wisely opted out of mass protests whenever dialogue was a better option. Today, a democratic Tunisia is looking forward to its second general election next month.  The genes were always there. In 1860, Tunisia had a charter of rights and a Nehru-like Habib Bourguiba took over as President after independence in the 1960s. His social engineering was responsible for the emergence of the human rights activist and the lawyer who shared the Nobel with the trade unionist and the businesswoman. 

But democracy in Tunisia is still fragile. It is an irony that the President is 87 and from the old elite while the revolt triggered by the street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi’s immolation was against unemployment and corruption. Essebsi is the presidential candidate again and his successor is not in sight. There are also deep divisions over tackling Ben Ali’s legacy of corruption and loot. The good news is the Prize will maintain the tempo of socio-economic change and also attract investment.  However, as the assassinations of leftist leaders Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi showed, the danger of violent radicalism has still not dissipated. Tunisia has a long way to go and the Nobel Prize should help define a few moral milestones along that journey.