I am sure that 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo of China is a brave and amazing person who puts mere mortals to shame. However, it made me sad this year to hear that yet another year passed without Vaclav Havel receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. It would have been so moving for him to receive the most prestigious decoration humanity offers - last year - when the Czech Republic was celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the Velvet Revolution. It could have been one giant festival of appreciation between President Havel and the Czech people who helped him transform their nation.
Instead of using the prize as a carrot and a capstone for a statesman's career, it seems the Nobel committee wants to use the prize as an accelerator of change, demanding almost through recognition that winners and their governments conform to what the Nobel Committee thinks should happen. This cheapens the prize in my opinion because it switches it from honoring the noblest and bravest among us to having a political motivation.
Last year, when Barack Obama won, I was offended, because I felt that as President he would need to make decisions that could be at odds with the Peace Prize goals. It felt manipulative to me, as an American, that the Committee would try and influence the course of his Presidency while it happened.
My emotions conflicted, though, because I recognized that anyone who voted for Barack Obama could feel a bit of pride in the Nobel Committee's contention that no one of that particular year had done more to change the landscape than Barack Obama. Since he had been in office such a short time, the American people could be proud that we had changed the landscape with new leadership.
I remember when I got on my half-full bus at 6 a.m.on that bleary day, I shouted out to the whole bus "how about that Peace Prize?" I was living in Madison, Wisconsin at the time where there was close to a 100% certainty that anyone on a bus in that town had voted for the President.
The Peace Prize selection glory reflects to those who followed. No one can be a prophet without followers. Vaclav Havel was the statesman he was because the Czechs chose to follow him. Barack Obama was elected President because the people of America chose to follow him.
Vaclav Havel's moral authority transitioned the country from Communism to freedom without violence and retribution in the Velvet Revolution and again to the stand-alone Czech Republic during the Velvet Divorce with Slovakia. How fraught those giant changes were and how much worse they could have been!
Even in retirement, Havel's moral authority can slice through rationalizations made in the name of strategic interests. Once, meeting with an American reporter for an interview, he asked, "Is it true Barack Obama cancelled his meeting with the Dali Lama?" (presumably to pacify China's leadership). Havel demonstrates the courage it takes to speak truth to power when your own country's is less.
America is comng to the age where our power will be eclipsed in size by China. Havel's success in keeping true to his values while navigating this size differential between the Czech Republic and the former Soviet Union is an example the whole world can learn from as the globe copes with China's rising, and frequently bullying, power.
One measure of a leader is how institutionalized the changes he embodied becomes; yearly, the citizens of the Czech Republic set new attendance records at the internationally-famous "Jeden Svet (One World) Film Festival in Prague, devoted to human rights around the globe. Czech people, having lived through totalitarianism, have a sophisticated understanding of oppression that is rarely found anywhere in the Free World. Havel, and the citizens of the Czech Republic, have something to teach all global citizens about what it is to speak truth to the larger power.
As I understand it, Liu Xiaobo and his fellow Chinese dissidents who created Charter 08, were inspired by Vaclav Havel and the Czech people who were signatories to Charter 77. Would a science Nobel go to a scientist whose work was derivative of another's theory? Wouldn't the committee honor the original thinker of the idea? Shouldn't Vaclav Havel receive a Nobel for inspiring freedom in the Czech Republic but now also China? It seems he is becoming worthier and worthier. Is there not time to honor that young man and not much time to honor Vaclav Havel?
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2 comments:
Actually Vaclav Havel was never elected directly by the people.
He was selected, unanimously, the first post-communist President of Czechoslovakia by the Federal Assembly, which was the highest legislative body in the country at the time. To achieve that kind of unanimity in the first fair, free election requires incredible popular support.
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