The Nobel Peace Prize works as an important agenda setter. It is simply a strong advocator for peace in the future, placing it again at the top spot of our priorities amidst the clutter of politics
The mud-slinging in this outstanding US presidential campaign holds great potential to numb our brains to much of the other international news these days. For instance, it was hugely challenging to have any cerebral receptivity left to ponder over the Nobel Prize win for Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos last month.
President Santos was awarded the prize for his efforts to end 52 years of a bloody war with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group that has been waging an insurgency against the Government since 1964. Depending on the results of a referendum for the people of Colombia held last month on the issue, Colombia and the FARC were to sign off a final and historic peace deal.
President Santos had worked hard on the terms of the peace deal — FARC fighters would disarm, handing over weapons to United Nations inspectors, and the FARC would become a legal political party with 10 guaranteed seats in the country’s Congress in the 2018 and 2022 elections.
Even more controversially, the agreement allowed rebels to avoid jail time if they confessed to crimes and participated in acts of ‘reparation’. The Nobel Peace Prize to President Santos would have been timely, given the solid victory for the referendum in favour of the peace deal that the pre-election polls had suggested. Yet five days before Santos got his Nobel Peace Prize, Colombian voters rejected the peace deal in the referendum. So the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to President Santos for the peace that did not arriveIJ
The Nobel Prize for literature awarded to Bob Dylan recently as well, seemed to generate more reactions from around the world. There were some who vociferously declared that a literature prize to a singer was breaking new ground in the field of poetic expression. While there were others who nursed their grudge against a choice that was unworthy or populist at best. In the past weeks, even the devaluation of the louis Vuitton bags sold in london, thanks to the spectacular pounding taken by the Sterling, has stirred up considerable sentiments. Investors have been rushing to the UK, to make a quick buck. We are still excitable.
But despite our inherent enthusiasm for stimulation, we are just jaded with the large quantities of news on elections, more referendums, and other well-meaning processes set up by us to ensure good governance. The third US presidential debate was not even entertaining any more. And earlier this summer, the entire unfolding of the referendum on Brexit was just as bizarre as it gets.
This brings me to the point that I often raise in my writings. Governance systems were put in place to ensure peace and order in our society, whereas they are now becoming the very cause of disruption of peace. In India, given the deep fascination with power, politics fulfills a deep psychological need to participate in voyeurism — to see passively who was in and who would be out. India is the world’s largest producer of politicians and democratic political parties, as well as holds the largest volumes of food reserves in its Government’s coffers. Yet India continues to also hold the unglorious rank of largest number of women suffering from malnutrition and anaemia in the world.
In the US, a third ridiculous round of Presidential election debates becomes the most watched debate in mankind’s history, and overshadows our interest instead in the aspects that would actually improve the state of humanity. In Colombia, too, if the result of a referendum destroys the chance for peace in one of the world’s deadliest guerrilla wars, then what good is such a democratic process at allIJ
Political processes have become more important than the issues they had set out to resolve. Politics has anesthetised us. The rise and fall of an individual on the barometer of power, and the consequences of it, have taken precedence in significance to all other social and humanitarian causes. Seen from this lens, we have really lost all logic.
And so in Colombia despite the referendum results, it is not obvious that the majority of the country actually opposed the peace deal. Only less than 38 per cent of the electorate actually bothered to turn up to vote, which means that a minority of Colombians defeated the deal. Further, the pre-election polls had suggested a massive victory for this referendum, which may have caused many ‘yes’ voters to stay home and not cast their vote.
But the peace negotiations in Colombia are not over yet. It cannot be over for the sake of the 220,000 deaths and 5,000,000 displaced people caused by half a century of conflict between the Colombian Government and the FARC.
The Nobel Peace Prize works as an important agenda setter. It is, therefore, agnostic of referendum outcomes. It is simply a strong advocator for peace in the future, placing it again at the top spot of our priorities amidst the clutter of politics.
The writer is Chief Sustainability Officer for the group of companies, Jindal Steel and Power ltd. She is a Global leadership Alumna of the World Economic Forum. miniya.chatterji@jindalsteel.com
