Nobel chairman is first demotion

OSLO: The committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize demoted its chairman on Tuesday, for the first time in the 114-year history of the award, after his right-wing opponents won the majority on the prestigious panel.

Thorbjoern Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister of the Labour Party who has chaired the five-member panel since 2009, will now be a mere member of the committee that has received a nearrecord 276 nominees for this year’s prize.

Kaci Kullmann Five, a former leader of Norway’s ruling Conservative Party, will take over after right-wing parties gained a new representative, giving them a 3-2 majority to make the unprecedented demotion at the first meeting of this year.

“The committee chooses a leader every year. This year is a new committee,” Kullmann Five said, declining to give reasons for ousting Jagland. “Jagland has been a good leader for six years.”

Right-wing parties, which won a parliamentary election in 2013 to oust a Labour-led government, have long disliked Jagland, who was prime minister from 1996 to 1997.

Jagland has been a lightning rod for criticism of awards including to Barack Obama in 2009 – less than a year after the US president took office – to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo in 2010 and to the EU in 2012.

Jagland is also head of the 47-nation Council of Europe, which promotes democracy in Europe, and some right-wing parliamentarians say that amounts to a conflict of interest in deciding the $1 million (R11.7m) Nobel prize.

Jagland’s demotion could make an award critical of President Vladimir Putin more likely, since Russia is a council member.

No serving chair has ever been ousted since the awards were first made in 1901.

“I don’t like it,” Asle Sveen, a historian and Nobel expert, said of Jagland’s demotion, saying China might interpret Jagland’s removal as a semiapology for the prize to Liu. – Reuters