Macbeth: A Noble Man and a Witch
Once upon a time, a witch encountered a noble man and told him that he will be a king one day. The noble man shared this bewitching prophecy with his wife. His wife pressured him to murder the king now to claim the prophesied kingdom.
This was from Shakespeare’s play of Macbeth some 400 years ago, set in Scotland. History repeats itself, and a few years ago, someone in the land of witches that change from human to hyena and back, a woman prophesies that one day an unknown man will be a king. And he becomes a king. Prophesy fulfilled. A committee in far-flung land took notice and awarded him, a prize. The Ignoble Peace prize.
He made speeches, plagiarized speeches, opened an already open border that thousands of young Eritreans have crossed in their thousands for almost twenty years, embraced the world’s brutal dictator. And voila, the Ignoble Prize came knowing on the heels of previous Arab award.
Now, the recipient, the winner of the ignoble prize will be in the pantheons of Mandela, a leader who was instrumental in quelling smoldering embers of civil war in South Africa.
The Noble Committee made the Noble prize a joke by awarding it to those whose efforts had no durable peace or are hitherto untested. The Arafat, [Perez], and Rabin award comes to mind. President Obama was awarded the prize for a promise, for his oratory skills, for perfecting a stump speech, before lifting a finger to implement his promises to world peace. And now the committee has outdone its past blunders by awarding it to Abiy Ahmed for his speeches, for his good intentions, for embracing a heinous dictator.
I think the committee would better serve the world by awarding the peace prize post-mortem to Abraham Lincoln than to Abiy Ahmed. To long dead Abe Lincoln: for risking his life to abolish slavery, upon witch future generation were able to build in securing civil rights…
A post-mortem award would better inspire more people to work for the good of humanity instead of learning the deeds of Abraham Lincoln and others solely in history classes. By creating foundations under the likes of Lincoln, and Oskar Schindler and by awarding the peace prize to these foundations, they can keep alive the accomplishment of those men for future generations. Lest we forget, as the old dies and the young forgets. This would serve humanity better than awarding the peace prize to light-weight leaders like Abiy Ahmed whose peace initiative is self serving and actually helps to protract the tyranny in Eritrea by giving dictator Isaias Afwerki a legitimacy and a lifeline.
The committee would serve humanity better by awarding the peace prize to Neil Armstrong and his crew for first landing on the moon and allowing humanity to think like citizens of earth instead cocoons of so called nations. Post-mortem.
The committee would better serve humanity by awarding the prize to the Manhattan project scientists: for creating the bomb that helped the allied forces triumph over the Nazis, who were planning to eradicate black people after cleaning Jewry from Europe. Post-Mortem. It is not too late.
The committee would better contribute to world peace by bestowing the award to one of the “Me Too Movement Women Pioneers” for standing up to the likes of Harvey Weinstein.
The committee will better serve humanity by awarding it to Julian Assange and Edward Snowdon for exposing Governments for lying to their people.
The committee will better serve world peace if it awarded the prize to Mo Ibrahim for creating a unique prize, a prize that has higher standard than speech giving and signing agreements that do not last. Only four recipients since its inception twelve years ago, is telling of its rigor and requirements.
By awarding the Noble Peace prize to leaders with initiatives devoid of any durable and tangible results, the committee renders the prize an Ignoble Peace prize.
Also, they could have easily awarded the prize to Isaias Afwerki for the following reasons: For swiftly accepting Abiy Ahmed’s proposal, for not dwelling on physically demarcating the border, for accepting that virtual demarcation suffices, for delegating leadership to the younger Abiy Ahmed, for figuring out that water does not come to where people are, but that peoples should travel to where water is, for banning the free media that is known to sow division in nascent nations…
The committee would better serve humanity by awarding the ignoble prize to the late Melles Zenawi for indicating that he would not seek re-election and actually not following through as his country needed him, and for insisting that the Nile Dam be built. I know that sounds ridiculous, but so is awarding the prize to Abiy Ahmed–PMAA has not even won an election yet!
Failing all that, they can structure the peace award as two-tier system. After someone is nominated, they can be elevated to potential winner (a promise to win) but not win the actual prize. And if they follow through their initiative beyond speeches. then they can be awarded the prize. This way the committee can encourage leaders with good intentions to aspire for higher accomplishments. Take a cue from Mo Ibrahim’s foundation. Speaking of Mo, how about the recent Sudanese peaceful disobedience! Led by the association of professionals, the people of Sudan waged a peaceful disobedience in the face of brutal rape and bullets from the military men. How about awarding them the prize to inspire other people to opt for peaceful disobedience instead of violence. The committee can award it to the people of Sudan and instead of the prize money going to one or two, it can go to foundations that promote peaceful means. The committee has many options, but instead they opted for the easy and lazy route.
And failing that, the committee can implement revocation mechanism if a winning leader committee’s genocide after receiving the prize.
Abiy Ahmed deserves credit for releasing political prisons and so he is worthy of the second tier of the prize, not the full Noble prize that puts him in the select few like Mandela.
Watch, the next Ignoble Peace prize will be awarded to President Trump: for first falling in love with the North Korean leader, and for crossing the DMZ.
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