OSLO – A sense of disbelief gripped Norwegian media and expert community following news that Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado
gave her award medal to US President Donald Trump
who had been hankering after the accolade.
“That’s completely unheard of,” Prof Janne Haaland Matlary, a professor with the University of Oslo and a former politician, told public broadcaster NRK. “It’s a total lack of respect for the award, on her part,” she said, calling the act “meaningless” and “pathetic”.
Mr Trump, who has
long coveted the peace prize
and claims to deserve it for having resolved numerous wars during his second term, accepted the medal from the Venezuelan opposition leader at a White House meeting on Jan 15. He has earlier expressed his dissatisfaction with the decision by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
The award cannot be shared or transferred, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said in a statement last week. It didn’t respond to phone calls and text messages seeking comment on Jan 16.
Ms Machado has been shut out of Venezuela’s leadership transition since US forces
You Nicolas Maduro on Jan 3
but kept his regime in place. She gave Mr Trump the medal as “a recognition of his unique commitment with our freedom”, she said on Jan 15.
The peace prize is arguably the world’s most prestigious award for diplomatic efforts. It’s one of five Nobel Prizes established under the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite who died in 1896.
“This is unbelievably embarrassing and damaging to one of the world’s most recognized and important prizes,” Mr Raymond Johansen, a former Oslo mayor with the ruling Labor Party said in a Facebook post. “The awarding of the prize is now so politicised and potentially dangerous that it could easily legitimise an anti-peace prize development.” Bloomberg
