“Let us build on the positive experiences instead of exchanging accusations,” Houcine Abassi, head of Tunisia’s General Labour Union (UGTT) told Correspondents last week, before he knew the national dialogue quartet in which he participated would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today.

“Let us build on the positive experiences instead of exchanging accusations,” Houcine Abassi, head of Tunisia’s General Labour Union (UGTT) told Correspondents last week, before he knew the national dialogue quartet in which he participated would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today.

Abassi was discussing the need for collaboration amongst Tunisia’s labour unions but his sentiments were no different in 2013 when Tunisia’s troika coalition government was on the verge of collapse. Still recovering from the political assassinations of opposition leaders Chokri Belaid and later Mohamed Brahmi, the entire nation was on edge and the disintegration of Tunisia’s transition appeared imminent.

But the quartet, which included UGTT, Tunisian Union for Industry and Commerce (Union of Investors), Tunisian League for Human Rights Defense and Tunisian Union for Lawyers managed to defuse the tension that had built up and steered Tunisia away from a political breakdown as witnessed in Egypt, which saw the popularly elected President Mohamed Morsi ousted by a military coup.

 Today the Nobel Committee in Stockholm awarded the quartet the prestigious prize “for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011.”