The 1967 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership

CITATION for Tun Abdul Razak

Ramon Magsaysay Award Presentation Ceremonies
Manila, Philippines

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.