Filipino blasts Magsasay choice
Filipino blasts Magsasay choice
MANILA (AFP): Honoring controversial Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer with the Ramon Magsaysay Award would be akin to honoring Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos for his writings, a former Filipino winner of Asia's most prestigious prize said.
The Manila-based award body, funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation of the United States, has come under fire in Indonesia and from former prize winners for choosing the leftist writer in its literature category.
The prize, named after a popular Philippine president who had successfully tamed a communist insurgency in the 1950s, will be handed out in several categories here on Aug. 31.
Prominent Filipino novelist F. Sionil Jose accused the award body of "gross mistake -- through incompetence," and criticized its retort that objections to its choice now carried little weight after the end of the Cold War.
"As for this stupid reasoning that a man's writings is his sole passport to fame, then all Filipinos should edify Marcos: never mind that he plundered this nation," Jose said in a letter published in Manila newspapers Friday.
"With his writings, he was the most nationalistic and the ablest of statesmen Filipinos ever had."
Pramoedya, who has been banned by Jakarta from traveling to Manila to receive his award, had belonged to a left-wing art organization which critics said was party to political suppression in the early 1960s.
Jose, who has threatened to return his own Magsaysay medal, argued that the French literary giant Jean Paul Sartre "supported communist causes but he did not harm his fellowmen like Pramoedya did when he was riding high. The evidence of his tyranny is documented. All that one has to do is to go to Jakarta."
Marcos died in exile in Hawaii in 1989, three years after a popular revolt toppled his 20-year rule. Manila and thousands of human rights victims during his regime are laying contesting claims on his multi-billion-dollar estate which the government said he had embezzled.