Nobel Peace Prize gives boost to Tunisia’s fledgling democracy
TUNIS, TUNISIA It was the fall of 2013 and Tunisia’s new-found democracy was in grave danger. The assassination of a left-wing politician had prompted the opposition to walk out of the constitutional assembly. The government was paralyzed, the constitution unfinished and the country on the brink of war.
In nearby Egypt, which had followed Tunisia in a democratic revolution, a coup had just overthrown the Islamist government, and some sectors in Tunisia wanted to follow suit.
Then four civil society groups — the main labour union, the bar association, the employers’ association and the human rights league — stepped into the fray. Working together, they got the Islamists to agree to resign in favour of a caretaker government that would organize new elections, while the angry opposition returned to the table to complete the constitution.
On Friday, that coalition — the National Dialogue Quartet — received the Nobel Peace Prize for its patient negotiating efforts, which carried Tunisia through an extended constitutional crisis and laid the groundwork for the only democracy that remains following the 2011 Arab Spring.
The prize comes at an important time, as Tunisia faces a new crisis that is nearly as critical as the one it confronted in the fall of 2013: A pair of terrorists attacks against tourists earlier this year left more than 60 people dead, provoking fear and devastating tourism, even as the faltering economy dragged support for the democratic process to historic lows.
The award also draws international attention to a region that is increasingly known more for the harrowing actions of the Islamic State group than the kind of compromise and negotiations that have allowed Tunisia to succeed.
The quartet was a long shot for the prize and none were more surprised than its actual members. Houcine Abbasi, the head of the labour union and the driving force in the 2013 negotiations, learned about the win from The Associated Press when reached for comment.
“I am overwhelmed by this,” he said, recalling how the country had been on the brink of war. “It’s a prize that crowns more than two years of efforts deployed by the quartet when the country was in danger on all fronts.”
For months, Abbassi and his colleagues tried to convince the Islamist-led government and the opposition to sit down together and agree on a new government of technocrats to end the crisis.
Several times talks broke down but Abbas never seemed to lose faith. In November 2013, after another walkout by the parties, he said “we do not believe in failure because the dialogue has to succeed — it is our destiny.”
In the end, despite acrimonious negotiations, the two sides were brought together and agreed on a caretaker prime minister and government. While elsewhere in the region, war raged in Syria, militias battled each other in Libya as politicians looked on helplessly and thousands were jailed in Egypt.
“It established an alternative, peaceful political process at a time when the country was on the brink of civil war,” the Nobel Prize committee said in its citation about the quartet’s efforts.
In a region known for violence and belief in the zero sum game of power, the quartet’s achievement in Tunisia stood out as a key Middle East exception, said Mohammed Fadhel Mafoudh, the head of the Bar Association that participated in the negotiations.
“It’s a message to all parties present in certain political conflicts, to tell them that everything can be settled with dialogue and all can be settled in a climate of peace, and that the language of weapons leads us nowhere,” he said.
The chairwoman of the Nobel committee, Kaci Kullmann Five, said the selection of Tunisia was made with a regional context in mind: “These are different countries but some of the main root causes of social upheaval often resemble each other.”