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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gq9C36tFdjA

09/07/2011
PATERNO ESMAQUEL II, GMA News

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’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)

“In a young democracy, people easily lose motivation to vote, so in elections, sometimes people feel that it only produces the elite class, not really benefiting people. So we think that we should activate citizens, especially the voters, to remain active in between elections," Koul tells GMA News Online.

Although electoral problems in Cambodia, such as fraud and violence, also prevail here, Koul believes the Philippines is in a much better position than his country in working for electoral reform as it has “a very strong political dynamic that contributes to improve the system."