A Nobel Peace Prize for María Corina Machado is like giving the prize to Bernie Sanders. The voice of conscience of a political Opposition in an increasingly authoritarian country; steadfastly opposing a premier who tends to go rogue ever so often; given to excessively candid bouts of conscience; serial runner-up in elections.

A Nobel Peace Prize for María Corina Machado is also like giving a Nobel Prize to Donald Trump. Head of a far-Right party that has regularly questioned election results and supported calls for forced regime change; finds allies in Jair Bolsonaro and Javier Milei, both acquired tastes; someone who credits Trump for achievement, as Trump himself does for any event of note anywhere in the world.

By choosing Machado, the Norwegian Nobel Committee seems to be giving the prize to Trump without giving it to him. Giving it to a woman from a country whose government he intermittently threatens to overthrow; giving it to a leader who is a neoliberal darling; giving it in the name of democracy, which is suffering in Venezuela and in the United States of America as well.

While this particular choice for the award appears clever more than anything else, it is the symptom of a deeper mindset that determines who gets awarded for what. When it comes to politicians, if you are in the Opposition, then your chances of getting the Nobel Peace Prize are high if you are a ‘saint’ from a ‘suffering nation’ — think Ales Bialiatski in Belarus, Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, and, now, María Corina Machado. If you are a head of State or thereabouts, it’s best if you’re American — think Barack Obama, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter. No wonder Trump was keen on the award. If you’re not American but a head of State from the developed world, you must have solved global problems — like Martti Ahtisaari, the former president of Finland, who resolved knotty global conflicts in Namibia, Kosovo and Indonesia. If you’re a head of State from a developing country which has faced major political turmoil in the past two decades, like Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali of Ethiopia or Muhammad Yunus, now the chief adviser to Bangladesh’s interim government, your award will probably be recorded in history as a mistake.

Though there are some exceptions to this classification, by and large it holds as a formula to explain the choices made by the Nobel Committee over the years. This view has often proceeded from a lack of ‘feel’ for the Global South. The award to Abiy in Ethiopia, who promptly engaged in a war with Eritrea soon after, sums it up: a peace prize to a warmonger was not a good advertisement for the Nobel Peace Prize. The point is not about a possible misjudgement in any one year. But at a time that’s increasingly seen to be synonymous with the collapse of Western liberalism, for a Committee that belongs firmly to the West to continue to dole out prizes for championing democracy in the non-West appears delusional at best and naked political interference at worst.

There may be a case that the West was not really liberal at any time, whether at home or abroad, in the last century. But if one were to keep that extreme view aside for a moment, it would still be certainly true that the Anglo-European-American axis fared relatively better in terms of free speech, human rights and fair elections than many countries elsewhere. With Trump at America’s helm, that sheen is off. But this is not just about Trump. Keir Starmer fires ministers of the Labour Party in the United Kingdom for a whiff of an independent view on matters, the Alternative for Germany and the National Rally in France make giant strides with every election, and Giorgia Meloni in Italy turns asylum-seekers away with fewer and fewer people questioning it.

The Nobel Committee has been given a wide, global mandate by its founder. The way the world is at the moment, unlike the way it was at many times in the 20th century, the Committee doesn’t have to look very far for champions of democracy. Jeremy Corbyn could be awarded the prize for constantly championing free speech and being a voice of conscience in politics; Angela Merkel for keeping the AfD at bay over a long and illustrious political career; maybe even Princess Märtha Louise and her Black-American husband, Durek Verrett, for being such personal symbols of racial equality in Norway at a time of growing European insularity. Does each of these recommendations have the potential of sounding ridiculous? Well that’s exactly what an award for Machado appears to many in Venezuela and elsewhere in the non-West.

Without looking inward, at a time of severe upheaval, awards to the likes of Machado can also appear like blatant political interference in the internal workings of a country. At another time, it may have been seen as encouragement to come of age. But today, the West has lost its moral high ground to preach from the pulpit to the expectant laity below. The Norwegian Nobel Committee has done little to convince watchers that it is changing course. Without such a course correction, the Nobel Peace Prize is beginning to look like an outmoded relic — a free trip to Scandinavia if you’re not imprisoned, some new social media followers if you are.

But the Committee has historically been cognisant of its mistakes. Having constantly overlooked Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest champion of peace and non-violence in the last century, the Committee atoned for its actions. Geir Lundestad, the then secretary of the Committee, remarked in 2006: “The greatest omission in our 106 year history is undoubtedly that Mahatma Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace Prize... Gandhi could do without the Nobel Peace Prize. Whether the Nobel committee can do without Gandhi, is the question.”

Maybe it will atone for its latest action too a few decades on. Or maybe it won’t. But that won’t matter. After all, the actions of the Committee after 2006 have shown that Lundestad was mistaken in his view. The Nobel Committee can not only do without Gandhi but it can also thrive without him.

Taken together, not giving the prize to Gandhi and now giving the prize to Machado are not aberrations. They are accurate symbols of what the Nobel Peace Prize actually is — a demonstration of a particular view of the world with the Anglo-European-American axis at its centre, often unable to understand, or profoundly ignorant of, how 90% of the world’s population live, feel and think. It is perhaps time the 10% start ignoring the Nobel Peace Prize a bit.

Arghya Sengupta is Research Director, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. Views are personal