In recent years, the Nobel Peace Prize committee has been criticised for handing out the world’s most respected honour as if it were a political bauble. Last week, it made no such mistake. The four-part Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet is more than just a deserving Peace Prize award recipient. The men and women - and the union they formed - is a democratic ideal. It can even serve as a model in many places. Thailand could try to replicate it, but it would take enormous effort to succeed. The Arab Spring began in Tunisia in 2010 when a street vendor set himself on fire in a political protest. By 2011, revolution was not just underway, but already beginning to wane and to fail. Other countries followed.
Virtually every other nation in the region tried to establish a viable and popular democracy out of a dictatorship. Almost all failed, often in terrible bloodshed. Libya, Syria and Yemen have not recovered.
The Islamic State rose out of the ashes of failed rebellions. The sad fact is their citizens were better off under dictators than the violent anarchy currently ruling and too often killing them.
Tunisia was different. This North African country had some luck, but as the Nobel committee showed last Friday, it mostly had committed, serious, hard-working and honest people.
They are not only honest because they are “not corrupt”, but they are politically honest. Their diverse makeup demonstrates the extreme differences that had to be overcome for them to work together to achieve a model state. The four groups in the National Dialogue Quartet are workers, businessmen, lawyers and human rights groups. Even here in Thailand, how difficult it is to unify any one of these groups, let alone form the four into one.
The red-yellow division alone splits each of them in half. For Thailand to even try what happened in Tunisia - and one hopes it can - massive sectarianism must be overcome.
This is not impossible. It requires translating lip service into action. Take the post-Erawan shrine bombing hashtag campaigns #StrongThailand and #StrongerTogether.
It could be time to test the sincerity of the internet users who sent out thousands of tweets per minute under these hashtags after the death toll was known. These are the attributes needed in any attempt to emulate the Tunisians.
Immediately after the Nobel Prize was announced, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi made a short broadcast to the nation, which is also posted on his Facebook page.
The country’s former foreign minister and prime minister said all in six words: “A triumph of negotiation over violence”. Tunisians ignored the extremists on all sides to talk out a solution to political differences - all in the interest of their country.
The president of the Human Rights League, Abdessattar Ben Moussa, told a popular Tunisian radio station that the Peace Prize award “proves that dialogue is the only way to solve a crisis and not weapons”.
Unfortunately that is neither true nor is it a universally-shared opinion. For hundreds of years, civil wars have settled national disputes far more often than negotiating has.
Nor is Tunisia entirely out of the woods; a bright future is not yet certain. But the National Dialogue Quartet has given the country the best chance of a peaceful future.
It has taken a crucial mixture of idealism, political realism and patriotism to make it work. Good luck to Tunisia, and it will be interesting to see if Thai leaders will emerge to try to replicate the model.