Millions in India could not in their lifetime know the richness of their literary heritage because they are illiterate or too poor to buy books. To them and the world outside, SATYAJIT RAY is bringing films with a fidelity to this heritage and to life. Unlike the vast majority of Indian films which are escapist, he strives for emotional integrity of relationships. With a disciplined sensitivity and a painter’s sense for the visual he probes the “struggles of an ordinary man trying to be good.” 

The cultural rebirth of Bengal has long been a family concern. His grandfather, Upenda Kishore Ray Chauduri, recorded folklore, pioneered in engraving and color printing and was a leader of the potent intellectual Brahmo Movement. His father, Sukumar Ray, a gifted cartoonist, wrote verse, especially for children, with buoyancy and humor and remains the most popular Bengali poet after Rabindranath Tagore. 

Raised in this environment and schooled at Viswa-Bharati University at Santiniketan under Nandalal Bose, father of revivalist Bengali art, RAY first turned his talent to commercial art. His performance for a Calcutta advertising firm won him a trip to Europe. In London, seeing Bicycle Thieves, Louisiana Story and Earth, he “discovered” the visual potential of the film. Back home in Bengal, watching Jean Renoir make The River gave him a feel for production in this media. 

“The time came when I felt I must make a film,” RAY recalls. He remembered the novel Pather Panchali (Ballad of the Road), a popular classic for which he had done illustrations. In October 1952, joined by eight technicians and actors, most of whom were amateurs, RAY began filming on weekends and holidays. Halfway through, they were forced to halt for lack of money. Financial assistance from the West Bengal State Govermnent finally permitted completion three years later. 

Hardly a commercial success in India outside of Bengal, this film went on to win the Cannes Film Festival special award for “best human document” in 1956. A second production, Aparajito (Undefeated), in 1957, won the Grand Prix at Venice. The trilogy, later completed with Apur Sansar (The World of Apu), telling a story of childhood, youth and manhood in Bengal, won altogether 16 international awards — a singular achievement in world cinema. 

In the Apu trilogy and his 11 other films and one documentary, RAY has striven for realism and a genuine expression of India. Aware of his medium’s potential and a director’s responsibility as he chronicles transition in his society, he emphasizes positive values. His protagonists have faith. Their poverty is not of the human spirit but of circumstance. Sadness of life is there, and so is sheer joy of living. The boy Apu recites poetry in the night. InJalsaghar (The Music Room), a selfish feudal lord, resisting the new industrial age amidst the ruins of his crumbling estate with a solitary aging elephant, is redeemed by his love for music. 

Equipment often has been inadequate, the budget stringent and the actors amateurs. But talent compensates. Writing his own scripts and sometimes composing the score, RAY, at the age of 45, has become India’s poet of the cinema. With an artist’s true concern for enduring human dimensions of life, he has deepened his people’s understanding of themselves and elevated their horizons of what the individual can accomplish. 

By this election, the Board of Trustees recognizes SATYAJIT RAY’S uncompromising use of the film as an art, drawing themes from his native Bengali literature to depict a true image of India.

In my country, in the days of my boyhood, the cinema was apt to be looked upon by the elderly and the conservative with a certain distaste. This applied more to the profession than to the films themselves. One could enjoy going to the movies, but that didn’t necessarily imply that one would approve of a member of one’s family joining the film profession. 

When I decided, some 15 years ago, to plunge into this very profession, such prejudices were already on the way out, but I made at least one person unhappy and that was my mother. 

When my first film won a festival prize my mother was pleasantly surprised. From that time onwards, until her death some years ago, she grew to be proud of my work, and of the prizes which came to me from all parts of the world. 

For myself, I have never ceased to be surprised at the fact that my films have been able to reach audiences beyond the limits of my own country. I am surprised because my films are stories about people who form a tiny segment, not only of humanity as a whole, but of India itself. 

I feel particularly honored and gratified by the Ramon Magsaysay Award because it relates not only to the craftsmanship of my films, but to their content as well. Unlike some other arts such as music and painting, cinema, by its very nature, makes concrete statements about people and society. If through my films I have been able to make statements which have been found illuminating, and therefore worthy of recognition, and if through them I have been able to convey some of the joys and sorrows of my people, as well as some of the unique flavor of my country, I would feel more than compensated for my efforts, and more than hopeful about the work that lies ahead. 

Once again, may I express my sincere gratitude to the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for the great honor they have bestowed on me.

A people only come to feel themselves a nation when they share in common institutions for accomplishing valued public purposes. Nowhere in Asia has the task of creating these facilities been more difficult than in Laos. 

Isolated by geography and French colonial policy, the more than two million inhabitants of Laos felt the first stirrings of modernization after World War II. Over the centuries the once proud Buddhist Kingdom of Lan-Xang had disintegrated before more aggressive neighbors until the remaining small state of Luang Prabang welcomed French protection in 1893. Thereafter, incursion by Tonkinese and Annamese was condoned by allowing them to take over trade, commerce and petty administration. Lao Issara, the freedom movement prompted by Japanese occupation, crystallized a national consciousness among younger elite and members of royalty. In 1949 Laos became an autonomous kingdom within the French Union and in 1954 won full independence. 

A keen participant in this struggle, KEO VIPHAKONE was convinced that agitation must make way for building. At his first post as Chief of Water and Forest Service for Champassak Province in late 1945, he showed his courage and principles in enforcing regulations against the rich and powerful. Serving briefly in 1949 as Chief of the Forests and Land Division of the new government his understanding of the country?s needs soon led to his appointment as economic representative to high councils of the Associated States of Indochina in Saigon, then as a senior diplomatic representative to Paris, Washington and the United Nations. 

When the Royal Lao Government in 1958 decided that lowland farmers and tribesmen in the hills must be reached with modern systems of education, transportation, water works and health services, KEO was brought home to improvise something entirely new for his country as Commissioner of Rural Affairs. In a land where there were only a dozen university graduates at the close of World War II, he had to enlist from without or train from within an entire range of skills. It is a measure of his competence that each of the rightist and neutralist governments that rose and fell in rapid succession over the next nine years retained his services. 

Roughly 20 per cent of the population of Laos has now come under programs he today directs as Secretary of State for Social Welfare and concurrently as Commissioner of Rural Affairs. Starting with relief and resettlement of refugees, KEO trained manpower and fruitfully utilized such outside organizations as Operation Brotherhood International, United Nations specialized agencies, and bilateral aid from several countries. His rural self-help and public works include well-drilling, building schools, roads, bridges, crematories, markets and dispensaries. More than one-half of all U.S. economic assistance to Laos is under his management. Repeatedly he has urged the Americans to be more patient in giving help so villagers can become involved in building and cherishing innovations. 

As a particularly underdeveloped new nation that has become a cockpit of the cold war, Laos has experienced tortuous military and political changes and offers easy temptation to ostentatious official corruption. In contrast to many leaders for whom independence has been an avenue to personal wealth and power, KEO has remained true to his Buddhist faith of simplicity in personal living and honesty in official dealings. Now at the age of 49, he has shown that even under the most adverse circumstances a man who claims his office as a public trust can bring progress to his people and foster their faith in government as a means to serve them. 

In electing His Excellency, KEO VIPHAKONE to receive the 1967 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, the Board of Trustees recognizes his sustained initiative and integrity in inaugurating public services for Lao villagers under handicaps that easily could have excused defeat.

I am happy to accept the Ramon Magsaysay Award and, with deep humility, the signal honor bestowed on me. 

In accepting the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service, my first thoughts are of the people of my country, the Royal Kingdom of Laos, whom I tried my best to serve during the last 25 years, and of the others in my Government with whom I had the privilege of working and sharing the responsibilities of public service. It is they, not I, who made this award possible. I consider myself only a human instrument, one might say, in the government machinery of my country to implement the policies and programs designed to promote the welfare and well-being of the Lao people. 

I would be less honest and frank if I did not say that the work for which I was cited is just begun and, therefore, the Award is yet to be fully deserved. We still have so much to do and with only limited resources of our own. I am happy to say that it is in our need for trained human resources that the Filipino people have been most helpful to us. Our problems are increasing in magnitude and complexity as our population is increasing. And, as if these vicissitudes are not enough, we are also plagued with the problem of peace and order, as we have been for many difficult years. 

It is in this context that I consider this Award as both a challenge and an opportunity: a challenge to continue with the task we began, inch by inch if need be, hut with increasing vigor and, hopefully, with clearer imagination, and with the tenacity of the elephant, our national symbol; an opportunity to accomplish more in the service of our people so that the Ramon Magsaysay Award with which I am being honored may be more completely deserved.

Farmers the world over have much in common that knows no national boundaries. Everywhere they work hard, coaxing the soil to produce, watching the weather and battling a host of enemies from weeds to blight and insects. While officials and technicians meet often in scientific and other gatherings, farmers rarely have the opportunity to trade foreign insight; although their tilling of the land is “first among the arts” it is essentially non-verbal. Dr. NASU recognized this need and acted effectively. 

His mother’s love of nature and Tolstoy’s philosophy emphasizing equality of man shaped NASU’s early values. Professor Inazo Nitobe’s commitment to internationalism and better agriculture led his student, born into a Samurai family, to make these his life concerns. Graduated with honors in agriculture from Tokyo Imperial University, in 1914 he joined its faculty. But academic pursuits did not blunt his concern for the feudal inequalities that then stifled Japanese peasantry. 

Surveying the plight of islanders in the Marshalls, Carolines and Marianas, NASU recommended policies that helped improve their lot. In the 1920?s, as advisor to the Japanese labor delegation to the League of Nations, he championed the right of tenant farmers to organize. Recognizing early the population and social problems on the land and the need for fair prices for farm products, he became a pioneer in these fields at home and abroad. 

After Japan’s defeat in 1945, NASU’s wartime role in establishing a School of Agriculture at Peking University, guiding emigrant settlement in Manchuria and advising the Nanking puppet administration led to his exclusion from government for five years. As a private citizen observing the land reform being engineered by the Allied Occupation, he became concerned that farmers using antiquated methods might still fail to improve their living. Kokusai Noyukai, or the Association for International Collaboration of Farmers, was the solution NASU devised. An agreement signed in 1951 with the Governor of California set the pattern. 

At first 30 to 40 young men went annually to California to work for one year with host farmers, learning latest methods for raising rice, fruit, vegetables, flowers, poultry and dairy animals. Others later were sent to Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, West Germany, Canada, Brazil and New Zealand to learn by working and to build enduring ties of friendship. By now some 1,600 trainees have returned to apply their new knowledge of farming, marketing of produce and building cooperatives. On the average, they have almost doubled their family income at home while leading in community betterment. They and their former hosts in Europe and America exchange seeds, fruit trees and even breeding animals. Recently, returned trainees themselves became hosts to a first contingent of young farmers from Korea, Taiwan and Brazil. 

When Dr. NASU was appointed Ambassador to India in 1959, he thought again of sharing knowledge. Young Japanese who have established demonstration farms in eight India states include nine trained abroad; the remainder are drawn from the two agricultural training centers for middle and high school graduates established by NASU in 1929 and 1938. In Pakistan, and elsewhere in Asia and Africa, other teams are following this example. Near Agra, Dr. NASU similarly involved his country’s medical profession in creating the India Center of the Japan Leprosy Mission for Asia. At the inauguration he said this effort represented an expression of gratitude for early English and French missionaries who had labored to eradicate leprosy in Japan. 

Now 79 years old, Dr. NASU has lived true to his youthful vow: rather than seek personal gain he would devote himself to larger goals benefiting farmers, particularly the least fortunate. 

By this election the Board of Trustees recognizes SHIROSHI NASU’s practical humanitarianism, enhancing cooperation in agriculture by learning through multinational experience.

Before expressing my heartfelt thanks for the great honor juts conferred upon me, allow me to make a brief remark in connection with the aim of my humble work, for which the foundation has generously awarded me. 

In this troubled world of ours, full of so many grave problems, there loom two towering issues which threaten to bring about terrible calamities, such as the downfall of present civilization or even total extinction of the human race on this planet. One is misuse of nuclear power for destructive purposes; the other is widening disparity between the explosive expansion of world population and the faltering increase of food supply. Here I shall refer to the latter. 

The changed world situation revived anew the food and population problem once supposed to have been buried together with the Malthusian Principles. At the World Food Congress held in Washington D.C. three years ago, Professor Arnold Toynbee warned us of the catastrophe which might occur if this problem be not properly met. Today, the Freedom from Hunger Campaign started by FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization) is afoot in many parts of the world; but so far, it can not command the sufficient support it deserves. 

The satisfactory solution of the problem must come through the full coordination of all concerned: politicians, economic planners, producers as well as consumers of food, medical and social welfare workers, technical experts, educationists, and so forth. When and where national interests collide with international aims, proper adjustment must be made. It is a gigantic work requiring a well-oriented international scheme and tremendous effort. 

The significant function of agriculture for increasing food production in this connection can never be overestimated. But, if the regional effort for increased production be carried out without any consideration of similar activities in other parts of the world, the aggregate result can sometimes be quite disastrous. Thus, the so-called “Selected Expansion of Agricultural Produce” was suggested by FAO as a partial remedy some years ago but its actual application up to this day has fallen short of the target. 

Perhaps, even a rough sketch of a world agricultural scheme which would meet requirements to solve the food and population problem has not yet been drawn; and even when a scheme emerges, it will be a fluid one ever undergoing changes and modifications. The details of the whole picture are at present very vague. Yet, one thing is clear. That is, in this democratic age the farmers must have their own say in framing the shape and in defining the details of world agriculture in the years to come. They must be allowed to act on their own initiatives. Lacking the full understanding and cooperation of the farming population, no governmental or intra-governmental agricultural policy can hold promise of success. 

Farmers all over the world tend to be conservative and their vision is usually limited within their nearest environments. But they cannot remain so in the future. They have to share the burden of creating a new world civilization. 

Fortunately, there is no national boundary dividing the mentality and way of thinking of world farmers. In agriculture there is no national trade or technical secret to be hidden from foreign farmers. It is true that there has been international competition in some agricultural products in the past, and this exists more or less even today. But the order of the day is to do away reasonably and fairly with such situations as soon as possible. 

Let me add here my humble remark that agriculture is not a mere business, but also a way of life storing much of traditional culture in any nation. The cultural heritage, which encompasses moral and spiritual values of our family or community life, should not be thrown overboard, good and bad alike, without discrimination, even in this fast changing cosmic age. But, in our too much mechanized urban living, we come across such deplorable cases very often. Are not juvenile delinquencies and moral anarchy which haunt so many advanced industrial nations today the sure signs of diseases belonging to the realm of social pathology? Healthy rural civilization can be a sort of cure for these cultural aberrations. John Ruskin once said, “There is no wealth but life.” Enlightened tillers of the soil are called to be internationally united and to march on a cultural crusade of the coming age. 

With this and other dreams in mind, I started some 16 years ago a movement in Japan to send her qualified farm youths to the United States and later to some European countries. They lived and worked together with farmers in respective countries. Aside from exchange of technical know-how, it gave them rare opportunities for international understanding and cooperation. When they came back home, some became champions introducing new outlooks and fresh ideas to their own villages. The results were quite remarkable. Others of them went abroad again to help their brethren in developing countries to build up agriculture and to foster food production. Here, the results were also noteworthy. A real beginning was thus made, though much limited as yet in scope. We are looking forward to seeing the emergence of new farmers of the new age, who are competent enough to tackle the difficult food and population problem. 

The Ramon Magsaysay Award was set up in memory of your great President whose wonderful character and shining achievements will ever be the source of inspiration for thousands of millions of Asian people. 

It is a great honor and privilege for me to have been elected as one of the Awardees this year. Here I must express my most sincere appreciation and gratitude. At the same time, however, I feel that the honor is not exclusively mine. I am receiving the honor because of the admirable efforts of those thousands of young Japanese farmers, and because of the warmest cooperation extended to me by so many good friends at home and abroad. With the fullest appreciation and gratitude to all of them, I receive this wonderful Award in all humility of heart.

Progress in all countries, particularly the less developed, depends substantially upon examples set by traditional leaders; unless they show the way, change by ordinary farmers becomes doubly difficult. So often in Asia hereditary elite are content with the old order or simply leave the land to join the new urbanites. Mom Chao SITHIPORN, instead, chose to leave high position, devoting his life and fortune to introducing agricultural methods new to the then Kingdom of Siam. 

A grandson of King Mongkut and nephew of King Chulalongkorn, Mom Chao SITHIPORN grew up at a time when these vigorous monarchs were opening Thailand to foreign contact. Sent to England for schooling, he studied engineering. Upon return to Bangkok he first engaged in private business and later joined the civil service, rising in 13 years to the highest rank. 

To relieve the routine of his official position he began to study agriculture. Increasingly convinced that other crops than rice should be encouraged, he decided to engage in farming. Also, he had married a noble lady reared in the Royal Household and felt her frail health could only be remedied by life in the open. Family opposition was overcome when his cousin, King Vajiravadh, gave the couple permission to leave and make their own life. 

At Bangberd, some 400 kilometers south of Bangkok, Mom Chao SITHIPORN in 1921 acquired 40 hectares of uncultivated upland and set out to prove with scientific management that a farm could be both a place to produce and to live. Contouring, terracing, and green manuring of fields and interplanting of crops were first seen in Thailand on his farm. Watermelons, flue-cured Virginia tobacco and improved corn — now Thailand’s third largest export — were among the new crops he promoted, demonstrating use of fertilizer and insecticides. The earliest Thai advocate of diversified farming, he was the first to breed and sell purebred swine and, with imported strains of high-yielding layers, to set up a commercial poultry operation. In his garden were vegetables uncommon to his country. His wife applied modern methods of preserving food. On no Thai farm before had records and cost accounts been kept. Experimenting with Thailand’s first tractor and many other laborsaving devices, he was his own mechanic. 

Educator and researcher more than simple farmer, he helped neighbors follow his practices and offered his seeds. Young agriculturists in government became his ardent admirers. To share more widely his findings he founded Kasikorn, still the only agricultural journal in Thailand. Associates in this venture were graduates of the College of Agriculture at Los Banos in the Philippines. 

Recalled to Bangkok in 1932, Mom Chao SITHIPORN served briefly as Director General of the Department of Agriculture. A lasting contribution was establishment of the first three upland experiment stations. Deposed by the coup d’etat ending absolute monarchy and imprisoned as a Royalist, he was incarcerated mainly on Taratao Island for 11 years. For fellow inmates he gave lectures on upland farming which were later incorporated in a book. Released near the end of World War II, he was elected to Parliament from his home province and served as Minister of Agriculture for a short period until he was again deposed by a coup. A notable achievement was his vigorous attack on rinderpest. As head of the Thai delegation, he was elected Chairman of the FAO Rice Commission for three successive sessions. 

His fortune exhausted but his spirit unbroken, Mom Chao SITHIPORN and his wife returned to reopen their Bangberd farm. Finding it more than they could manage, it was sold in 1960 and a two hectare plot purchased near Hua Hin. There the Prince continues to grow vegetables, grapes and other fruits. Now 84 years of age, he maintains an active correspondence with agriculturists. In articles to newspapers, he vigorously defends the interests of Thai farmers, critically challenging government policies with the pragmatism of a man who knows the soil.

In accepting the 1967 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service, I cannot find words to express adequately the sense of appreciation and gratification that I feel on being so highly honored; this feeling of gratification is accompanied by surprise and astonishment that the Board of Trustees should have delved so diligently into my past and the work that I began so long ago, when the Chairman of the Board was still a small boy and the Executive Trustee had not even been born. So it is with profound emotion that I ask the Board of Trustees of the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation to accept my grateful and sincere thanks for the high honor bestowed upon me, thanks not only on my own behalf, but on behalf of my descendants who will always feel proud that their ancestor was an Awardee of the Foundation. 

However, I must emphasize that my work would have been of little use if it had not been carried on so well by my colleagues and associates, who like many others after them were alumni of the College of Agriculture at Los Banos, and I feel happy that I have lived long enough to see that the educational ties started a half century ago, which have been so beneficial to the agriculture of my country, have ripened into the friendship now firmly established between the Republic of the Philippines and Thailand. 

On this day, the 60th anniversary of the birth of the late President Ramon Magsaysay, may I have the privilege of saying some words, which I hope will help in a small way to keep alive the “spirit of Magsaysay,” his dedication to improving the lot of the common man. 

Specifically, I would like to speak of the millions who form the vast majority in our part of the world, namely the farmers, the humble tillers of the soil, whose welfare Ramon Magsaysay had so much at heart.

Molding diverse peoples into a nation and moving them from feudalism to modernity demands leadership possessed of a rare range of skills. Sound plans are needed. Malaysia?s are designed to be translated promptly into more democratic economic well-being. Official management must be more than energetic; it must temper insistent pressure for performance by government and the private sector with astute awareness of what is possible at a given moment. At this level politics becomes both a science and an art. Tun RAZAK is its devoted practitioner.

Pahang State, where ABDUL RAZAK was born in 1922, is in the heartland of traditional Malay culture. Influenced by this setting and the career of his father, a hereditary chief and a senior member of the Malayan Civil Service, the alert young man grew to value the best from East and West. When his studies at Raffles College in Singapore were interrupted by the Japanese attack, RAZAK helped organize Wataniah, the Malayan Resistance Movement.

In England after the war, where he qualified for the Bar with distinction in half the usual time, RAZAK met Tunku Abdul Rahman. Soon fast friends, they and associates in the Malay Society of Great Britain were caught up in the excitement of independence for neighboring lands of the Empire. From the brutal tragedy accompanying partition of India and Pakistan grew the determination to cooperate with Chinese, Indians and others in making theirs a genuinely multiracial nation with room for all faiths.

Back in Malaya, ABDUL RAZAK became Deputy President of the United Malays National Organization and a leader of the Alliance Party that won over communal prejudice at the polls in 1955, thus hurdling the major barrier to independence. The youngest Chief Minister of a Malay State as Mentri Besar of Pahang, RAZAK resigned from the Malayan Civil Service to stand for election and won handily the seat from his home constituency. As Education Minister, he joined in negotiations the next year in London that culminated in Merdeka (independence) on August 31st, 1957. As Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister of independent Malaya, he directed the war against Communist terrorists who rejected an amnesty and plea for peaceful cooperation in building the new nation. Winning villagers away from the insurgents, by July 1960 his government could proclaim the Emergency ended.

Realizing that independence would prove a mirage without a new way of life for their people, the government created a Ministry of National and Rural Development headed by Tun ABDUL RAZAK to plan and implement bold change. Today, some 140,000 acres of virgin land have been opened for 12,000 near-landless families in 60 successful settlement schemes. Meticulously engineered, these new communities are complete with access roads, schools, teachers’ quarters, water supplies, telephones, electricity, health facilities, public halls, shops and houses of worship. Each settler starts anew with eight acres planted to high yielding rubber or oil palm, two acres for orchard, a house, garden plot and a modest subsidy until his first income crop. For these, he repays the government over a period of years.

Irrigation and drainage projects have increased five-fold acreage capable of being double-cropped in rice. On small and large holdings throughout the Federation agriculture is being diversified; production of livestock, fish and forest products has increased rapidly. Locally manufactured goods of many types have begun to replace imports. In urban centers are 13,200 new low-cost housing units. Combating illiteracy and high population growth are well-attended adult education and family planning classes in cities and villages.

To support this vast enterprise, the Government trains intensively an ever increasing cadre of technicians and administrators. From his Operations Room, adapted from his earlier war room and duplicated in every state and district headquarters, Tun RAZAK keeps constant watch on performance by each agency of government assigned responsibility for a share of the work. Scheduled and surprise inspection trips take him 60,000 miles a year. Often working 16 hours a day and living modestly, he expects and gets dedicated service from his subordinates. In his relentless drive to insure that clear plans become early reality, the inhabitants of the old kampongs see their best hope for a new way of life in Malaysia.

In electing His Excellency, Tun ABDUL RAZAK BIN HUSSEIN, to receive the 1967 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership, the Board of Trustees recognizes a politician administering with quiet, efficient and innovative urgency the reshaping of his society for the benefit of all.

We are happy that the Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia receives the 1967 Magsaysay Award today when festivities are taking place all over my country marking 10 years of our freedom.

My brother could not come in person to receive the Award because today’s presentation coincides with the Independence Anniversary of Malaysia. He has, therefore, asked me to come to Manila to receive the Award on his behalf.

The Deputy Prime Minister has asked me to deliver this message to you all. I quote:

“I would like to apologize for not being able to receive the Award personally. However, I feel greatly honored to be chosen the winner of the 1967 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. I am indeed grateful to the members of the Magsaysay Foundation Board of Trustees for their recognition of whatever little I have done, am doing and will continue to do for the development of Malaysia and the progress of the Malaysian masses. Your recognition will, I have no doubt, spur Malaysians to further and greater progress and achievements”.

“It has not been an easy job for my colleagues in the government and for me personally to do whatever we have done for our country. We have achieved progress and political stability as a result of a partnership of efforts. The Malaysian people have responded and our government officers have served well. The politicians have conducted the affairs of the state with great credit to themselves”.

“It is difficult anywhere to move people—traditional people as Malaysians are—from feudalism to modernity and to mold a diverse people into a nation; but thanks to the Almighty, through partnership of efforts, cooperation and understanding of all the races, we have managed it in Malaysia. This was because we rely on the good sense, the practicability of our ra-ayat (people) and harness their aspirations for stability, affluence and a desire for a respected place in the international community. We put our trust in universal education, and a major part of our national and rural development plan is adult education and community development. We also concentrate on giving the people projects that will afford them lasting economic betterment and create employment opportunities for our youth.

“The late President Magsaysay was regarded by Malaysians as easily the most popular Filipino leader of unchallenged honesty and integrity. He brought order and peace to your country, which was then threatened by communists, and restored the confidence of the people in the government and, with their support, wiped out the Hukbalahap terrorists. He knew this is the only way to fight and best communists”.

“During the same period he was reforming the Philippines and fighting terrorists, we were ourselves fighting communism, which was later also beaten by the same methods that the late President Magsaysay had used in his fight against the Filipino communists”.

“After the war against the terrorists was won in 1960, we found the people weary and longing for progress of which the Emergency had deprived them. So, in 1961, I started the present National and Rural Development Program which has given Malaysia progress, prosperity and political stability. Through the National and Rural Development effort, we have provided for the country a strong framework with many development projects. As a result, Malaysia has a firm base of economic and political stability and a flourishing democracy. Our main job now is to continue our work of nation-building and ensure that all our people will live in peace and harmony and the parliamentary system of government thrives and is strengthened”.

“We in Malaysia regarded the late President Magsaysay as one of communism’s most ardent and effective foes and a staunch believer in international cooperation. But he did not live long enough to see the growing friendship and cooperation between our two countries and the regional cooperation that is about to take place, or is already taking place though in a very limited way, among the sovereign nations of Southeast Asia through various international agencies. We have just formed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which I sincerely hope will grow into a meaningful association serving Southeast Asia.

“I am very glad to see that the Philippines and Malaysia are on the friendliest of terms. I hope the Philippines, Malaysia and other countries in the region will always get together to resolve common problems and to plan and meet common aspirations and ideals. It is in this direction that my country’s foreign policy and objectives are at the moment giving high priority.

The late President Magsaysay served his country well, and I am very glad to be associated with the name and memory of this great man whose life was spent serving his people. Inspired by his example, my only desire in life is to serve the people and my country and, if I can do the little that I know I am capable of in the best traditions of the late President Magsaysay, I would indeed be a happier man.”