Peace Prize confounds predictions

OSLO – Perhaps only once in the history of the Nobel Peace Prize has a secret been as well kept as Friday’s 2006 award to Bangladesh’s Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank for lending to the poor.

In a room at the Nobel Institute where white plaster doves adorn the ceiling, journalists’ jaws dropped when Ole Danbolt Mjoes, head of the five-member Nobel Committee, named the newest laureates and praised their loans to the poorest of the poor. Among the banks of cameras and microphones, almost no one seemed to know who they were.Nor did I, trying to cover my 13th Peace Prize from the bureau across town via phone, radio and live television.It was about as big a surprise as the 1995 award to British ban-the-bomb scientist Joseph Rotblat and his Pugwash Conferences.The 1995 Nobel thunderbolt has gone into the lore of the award, first made in 1901, as a source of delight for the prize guardians who do not like their secret to leak, and of nightmares for reporters who try to read the runes.Perhaps we should have known a shock was brewing when we handed Geir Lundestad, head of the Nobel Institute, a bookmakers’ list of some 60 candidates during the interview, topped by Finland’s former President Martti Ahtisaari for brokering peace in Indonesia’s Aceh province.Lundestad scanned it and handed it back, remarking: “That’s a good list”.Neither Yunus nor Grameen Bank were on it.Committee members say they do not even tell their spouses who has won the award, worth US$1,36 million and set up by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish philanthropist who invented dynamite.They usually make their decision in late September.Yet maybe they talk in their sleep because almost every year the frenzy of leaks, media speculation, bookmakers’ lists and experts’ predictions turns up the right names.The International Atomic Energy Agency and its head, Mohamed ElBaradei, won in 2005.They were bookmakers’ favourites.Historians say there was less secrecy in the early years – news agency reporters were routinely told the name of the winner in advance until the late 1980s to make their lives easier.”Get a reporter to Calcutta,” Reuters was told in 1979 a few days before the prize went to Mother Teresa in the Indian city.No longer.This year we and others were wrongly preparing to write about Ahtisaari, human rights activists from China to Russia and Australian ex-Foreign Minister Gareth Evans.Nampa-ReutersAmong the banks of cameras and microphones, almost no one seemed to know who they were.Nor did I, trying to cover my 13th Peace Prize from the bureau across town via phone, radio and live television.It was about as big a surprise as the 1995 award to British ban-the-bomb scientist Joseph Rotblat and his Pugwash Conferences.The 1995 Nobel thunderbolt has gone into the lore of the award, first made in 1901, as a source of delight for the prize guardians who do not like their secret to leak, and of nightmares for reporters who try to read the runes.Perhaps we should have known a shock was brewing when we handed Geir Lundestad, head of the Nobel Institute, a bookmakers’ list of some 60 candidates during the interview, topped by Finland’s former President Martti Ahtisaari for brokering peace in Indonesia’s Aceh province.Lundestad scanned it and handed it back, remarking: “That’s a good list”.Neither Yunus nor Grameen Bank were on it.Committee members say they do not even tell their spouses who has won the award, worth US$1,36 million and set up by Alfred Nobel, the Swedish philanthropist who invented dynamite.They usually make their decision in late September.Yet maybe they talk in their sleep because almost every year the frenzy of leaks, media speculation, bookmakers’ lists and experts’ predictions turns up the right names.The International Atomic Energy Agency and its head, Mohamed ElBaradei, won in 2005.They were bookmakers’ favourites.Historians say there was less secrecy in the early years – news agency reporters were routinely told the name of the winner in advance until the late 1980s to make their lives easier.”Get a reporter to Calcutta,” Reuters was told in 1979 a few days before the prize went to Mother Teresa in the Indian city.No longer.This year we and others were wrongly preparing to write about Ahtisaari, human rights activists from China to Russia and Australian ex-Foreign Minister Gareth Evans.Nampa-Reuters