Vigilance doesn’t end on election day, Cambodian reformer says

PATERNO ESMAQUEL II,
GMA News
7th September, 2011

This year, six awardees from different parts of Asia take center stage in the annual Ramon Magsaysay Awards, the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize, to serve as models of leadership and service. In this series, GMA News Online asks each awardee: What can the Philippines learn from your story?

The father of Koul Panha, a Ramon Magsaysay awardee from Cambodia, was killed by the authoritarian regime in his country when he was eight, in a political environment not unlike the previous dictatorship in the Philippines.

Koul Panha Courtesy of RMAF

Koul’s father was killed in 1976, along with over one-fifth of Cambodia’s population, under the oppressive Khmer Rouge regime. That was also around the time the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos placed the Philippines under martial law, resulting in widespread human rights violations.

The trauma of losing his father at a tender age drove Koul to work for change in his country. Ever since Cambodia gained its democracy and held its first free elections in 1993, Koul has worked to protect his country’s democracy before, during, and after elections.

He received the Ramon Magsaysay Award this year for his work in the Committee for Free and Fair Elections (Comfrel), the Cambodian counterpart of the Philippines’ National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel). He has led Comfrel as its executive director since 1998. (Read his story in the document below)