By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Venezuela’s opposition leader and democracy activist Maria Corina Machado was on Friday awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, ending the dream of US President Donald Trump grabbing the coveted peace prize.
Machado was honoured “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy,” chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Jorgen Watne Frydnes said in Oslo.
She has been a “key, unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided … in a brutal authoritarian state that is now suffering a humanitarian and economic crisis,” Frydnes stated further.
The committee hailed her as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times”, noting that she has been forced to live in hiding in the past year.
“Despite serious threats against her life, she has remained in the country, a choice that has inspired millions.”
Trump has not hidden his desire to win this year’s prize. Since January when be returned to the White House for his second term, the US leader has repeatedly insisted that he “deserves” the Nobel for his role in resolving numerous conflicts, including the ceasefire deal being brokered between Israel and Gaza. Analysts have however faulted Trump’s claims, saying they are broadly exaggerated.
In the run-up to Friday’s announcement, Nobel Prize experts in Oslo had insisted that Trump had no chance, noting that his “America First” policies run counter to the ideals of the Peace Prize as laid out in Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will which sets up the award.
Last year, the prestigious prize was won by a Japanese anti-nuclear group Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The prize comes with a gold medal, a diploma and a prize sum of $1.2 million.
The award will be presented at a formal ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel.
The Peace Prize is the only Nobel awarded in Oslo, with the other disciplines announced in Stockholm.
On Thursday, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Laszlo Krasznahorkai, considered by many as Hungary’s most important living author, whose works explore themes of postmodern dystopia and melancholy.
