Obama and the ‘eating’ of the Nobel Peace Prize

Very many people, including US President Barack Obama, were surprised when it was announced last week that he had won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

In the US, his extremist conservative critics and enemies went into hysterical overdrive, denouncing the Nobel Committee for awarding the Nobel to the US president, and beating down Obama for having won it!

Never mind, as one columnist put it, that Obama did not nominate himself nor seek the Nobel.

The Nobel Committee decided to give the Nobel to Obama for how much he has inspired the world, the promise he holds out for doing good things like nuclear disarmament, and embracing international diplomacy in ways American presidents haven’t done for long.

However, many critics argue, and it is a good line one must admit, that Obama has been in office for only nine months, not enough time for him to have achieved much. The prize should have gone to someone with a long track record, even possibly former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan for brokering the deal that ended post-election violence in Kenya last year.

This is not just about Obama and the Nobel Committee. The debate about whether to reward the present and past, or future is a profoundly philosophical one. I confronted it more than 20 years ago when I went for lunch in a Kampala restaurant that is world famous for local cuisines.

I was in the company of an elderly and supremely interesting Ugandan journalist called Paul Waibale. Paul was a veteran of DRUM magazine in its glory in 1960s and 1970s when it had among the best crime reporting in the world.

We found that there was only half a helping of the particular dish we had gone for. Jokingly, I told Paul that since he had been putting away lunches and dinners for nearly 65 years, he should let me have the portion because I was in my mid-20s, and therefore he had almost 50 years more of eating than I.

Paul chuckled, and said: “Well, you can also say that since at my age I am about to pass on, you should let me have it, because you still have very many years of eating ahead of you”.

In the end, we split it.

Paul died four years ago.

Most of the big things in our world, however, are not a draw about the past and future. Like Obama’s Nobel, most of them are a prize for the future.

TAKE WEDDINGS. MARRIAGE VOWS, and the gifts that are lavished on wedding day are about the future. You do it because you are betting on a happily married life in future.

If we turned that norm on its head, and people only got married after a few years of test driving their partners, there would probably be only about 10 per cent of the weddings we have today. In that sense, the Nobel Committee was very much in step with our times.

That said, the secretive way the committee operates is old fashioned. Today we live in the Information Age, where the abundance of mobile phones and the Internet means the most popular prizes are awarded through a vote by the masses: Things like American Idol, Big Brother Africa, and The Project Fame.

Not to mention that the Nobel Committee is a bunch of grey-haired white men and the odd woman. There is no one from my tribe, or your village that sits on it.

So, to deal with the uproar of Obama’s win, perhaps the Nobel could be decided by a more representative global vote of the people.

Well, I see a bigger problem. Being the world’s most popular and charming leader, Obama would still have won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. And next year’s, and for 2011.

Which leads us to the next question. Why? The reality is that after the death of Mother Theresa, and with the globe’s only living saint Nelson Mandela slowed down by age and frailty, there is a vacuum in world moral leadership and inspiration.

For now, at least, it seems Obama is filling that vacuum.

The only disagreeable thing about the Nobel going to Obama, who has made millions from his books, is that ordinary folks like us who have school fees and mortgages to pay, deserve the $1.4 million (Sh107 million) cheque that comes with the prize more.

I also think that in his father’s ancestral home in Kogelo, not everyone is impressed with his decision to give the money away to charity — as if he didn’t have relatives.

cobbo@nationmedia.com