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.