Mohammed Fadhel Mafoudh, head of the Tunisian Order of Lawyers, called the Nobel Peace Prize a message to all parties embroiled in political conflicts.
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The award drew praise from around the world as a “beacon of hope” for the region, while one victor said it was a tribute to the “martyrs” who died in the struggle to move the north African country from dictatorship to democracy.
As history professor Habib Kazdaghli of the University of Tunis in Manouba said in October of 2013, the national dialogue “occurred only because it was preceded by a series of painstaking consultations and preliminary conversations with Tunisia’s various political factions”. Yet, though its newly adopted constitution, in a concession to Islamic sentiment, states the president needs to be a Muslim, it also grants substantial rights to women.
The UGTT helped to put the troubled process back on track by bringing the different sides to the table.
Within a couple of years, leaders had been forced from power in Egypt, Yemen and Libya.
With a membership of about half a million and a network of operations across the country it is capable of organising large protests and strikes in response to social grievances. In May, Tunisia’s president visited Washington. Although the Islamists did not trust its political opponents, they did trust Abassi, the union leader.
Irina Bokova said Tunisia represents hope for the Arab world and beyond, and the Nobel Prize win is an incentive for the worldwide community to give its full support to the country.
This year, the country was shaken by an attack on foreign tourists visiting the National Bardo Museum in the capital in March and a beachside massacre near the city of Sousse in June.
The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet is this year’s victor of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Last month Ms Guellali had written about the transitional justice process that is underway in Tunisia after the proposal of an “economic reconciliation law” that could potentially provide immunity for corruption and other economic crimes. For making that possible, Tunisia’s quartet richly deserve their recognition. Among the nominees were Pope Francis and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
When Tunisians harbour doubts about where their country is headed, more than four years on from their revolution, they realise from looking around the region that things could be so much worse.
However, Nobel Peace Prize Watch (NPPW) says the Quartet “is clearly outside the circle of recipients Nobel had in mind”. You can see it both as a sort of democratic boost for Tunisia and a sign to other countries where the democratic Spring has turned bad.
Private broadcaster TV2 reported that they, and probably an European Union representative, were considered in the final round of deliberations by the committee which is due to announce the victor at 0900 GMT (5 a.m. EDT). “And now it’s really the only country in the region that remains on a path to democracy”. “It’s a process that started so that Tunisia would have a democratic system… that respects freedoms”.
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The prize to the coalition, known as the National Dialogue Quartet, comes almost five years after an unemployed street vendor set himself on fire, touching off a political quake that toppled Tunisia’s long-time authoritarian President and proceeded to reverberate throughout West Asia and North Africa. But the progress made thus far came about because of the ability of civil society organizations to reach a “landmark compromise” between the government and opposition groups, according to Mohamed Kerrou, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center.
