Davide is Magsaysay awardee

Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. will be conferred the Ramon Magsaysay Award for government service tomorrow in ceremonies at the Cultural Center of the Philippines in Manila.

Five other outstanding Asians, including a Catholic nun and a Buddhist monk, will also receive the prestigious award in various categories. They are:

• Dr. Ruth Pfau, a Catholic nun in Pakistan who for many years led the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Center, for public service.

• Dr. Cynthia Maung, founder and head of the Mae Tao Clinic in the border town of Mae Sot in Thailand, for community leadership.

• Bharat Koirala, founder and lifetime mentor of the Nepal Press Institute, for journalism, literature and creative communication arts.

• Sukao Choi (Venerable Pumnyun Snim), a South Korean Buddhist monk, for peace and international understanding.

• Sandeep Pandey, of Asha for Education, India, for emergent leadership.

The 66-year-old Davide is being recognized for "his life of principled citizenship in profound service in democracy and the rule of law in the Philippines."

After passing the Bar in 1959, Davide embarked upon a career in law and, at 37, represented Cebu as a delegate to the 1971 Constitutional Convention.

At the Interim Batasang Pambansa in 1978, Assemblyman Davide called for an end to martial law and sponsored bills opposing corruption and promoting electoral reforms.

As a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission, Davide authored the articles governing the newly established Congress, following the overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos.

Appointed to the Supreme Court in 1991, Davide wrote a landmark decision, asserting the right of children to sue for a healthy habitat for themselves and for "generations yet unborn."

When President Joseph Estrada named him chief justice in 1998, Davide strove to isolate judges from political favor and to raise standards for recruitment and performance, disciplining erring judges.

As presiding judge in Estrada’s impeachment trial in 2000, Davide personified the dignity and impartiality of the Constitution itself.

When the power struggle spilled into the streets, his timely intervention on behalf of "the welfare and will of the people" averted violence and brought the crisis to an end.

Pfau is being honored for "her lifelong dedication to eradicating leprosy and its stigma in Pakistan, and other loving gifts to her adopted country."

Born in Germany, Pfau survived the havoc of Nazism in her youth and became a doctor amid the ferment of postwar Europe, and later found direction in Catholicism.

After joining the Daughters of the Heart of Mary – a religious order dedicated to the relief of misery – Pfau asked to be sent to Asia.

Destined for a mission station in India, Pfau stopped over along the way in Pakistan.

There, in a Karachi slum, fellow members of her order had set up a ramshackle leprosy dispensary named after their founder, Marie Adelaide.

In two years’ time, Pfau transferred the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Center (MALC) to a proper building and established a full-service leprosy treatment and rehabilitation center, free to patients.

In 1968, Pfau invited the Pakistan government to undertake a National Leprosy Control Programme in partnership with MALC.

Pfau traveled to the most remote and rugged corners of Pakistan, making now-legendary treks by horseback and camelback and by foot.

Today, Karachi’s eight-story Marie Adelaide Leprosy Center is the hub of 170 leprosy control centers, with some 800 staff members.

Maung is being cited for her "humane and fearless response to the urgent medical needs of thousands of refugees and displaced persons along the Thailand-Burman border."

Born to a Karen family in Moulmein, Burma in 1959, Maung studied medicine at the University of Rangoon before practicing in a Karen village near her hometown.

When Burma’s military junta launched a crackdown against democracy advocates in 1988, Maung packed a few clothes and medical reference books and fled with some students to Mae Sot in Thailand.

In her makeshift clinic at a refugee camp, Maung treated the local scourges of malaria, respiratory disease, and diarrhea as well as shrapnel and gunshot wounds and injuries from land mines.

By 1996, Maung was supporting six thatch-and-tin clinics in the Karen-controlled war zone, where medics treated common illnesses, set broken bones, and performed simple frontline surgeries.

Maung attracted volunteer doctors, nurses and medical interns from abroad and tirelessly solicited help from relief agencies and non-government organizations.

Today, staffed by five doctors and dozens of health workers and trainees, Maung’s clinic provides free comprehensive health services to 30,000 people a year.

Koirala is receiving the award for "developing professional journalism in Nepal and unleashing the democratizing powers of a free media."

Born in 1942, Koirala was educated at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu and soon became a newspaperman.

As he rose eventually to head the state-owned Gorakhapatra publishing house, Koirala admits practicing "a heavy dose of self-censorship."

But Koirala encouraged young reporters to write good stories and shielded then when the results offended someone in power.

And he steered them to cover Nepal’s economic development and its impact on the rural population.

In 1984, Koirala established the Nepal Press Institute, introducing journalists not only to new skills but also to professional ethics and standards, and to the role of media as a watchdog.

After leaving Gorakhapatra in 1986, Koirala turned his attention to Nepal’s rural areas, where fully half the district had no access to national newspapers.

With funds from the Agricultural Development Bank, Koirala began mounting huge billboard-style newspapers in rural towns, which proliferated later in Nepal’s remote hill districts.

When a democratic revolution overtook Nepal in 1990, Koirala played an important role in the transition to greater press freedom.

Choi is being recognized for his "compassionate attention to the human costs of Korea’s bitter division and his hopeful appeal for reconciliation."

Born in 1955, Choi entered the Buddhist monkhood as a youth but abandoned his robes to join South Korea’s democracy movement.

As the movement prevailed, Choi formed the Jung To (Blessed Land) Society to apply Buddhist teachings to the full range of modern ills, from greed and poverty to environmental degradation.

In 1991, Choi was ordained a Buddhist monk and thus became the Venerable Pomnyun Snim, the name he is known today.

During the next several years, Choi and his group established a free school and a medical center and village development center in Dongeshwari, a 16-village hamlet of untouchables in India.

In the 1997 and 1998, Choi visited North Korean "food refugees" in China and learned the appalling dimension of famine in North Korea.

As his organization assisted refugees, Choi urged South Koreans to put aside their fears and suspicions and help the people of North Korea.

The South Koreans donated some $2 million for food aid and thousands of articles of clothing the North Koreans.

Pandey is being cited for "the empowering example of his commitment to the transformation of India’s marginalized poor."

Born to India’s middle classes, the 37-year-old Pandey studied at Benares Hindy University before attending graduate school in the United States.

While pursuing a Ph.D. in control theory at the University of California-Berkely, Pandey joined V.J.P. Srivastavoy and Deepak Gupta to form Asha (Hope), to support education for poor children in India.

In one year, the enterprising founders raised $10,000 from donations of Indians abroad, an auspicious beginning for an organization that now has 36 North American chapters.

After launching Asha, Pandey returned to India, doctorate at hand, and taught briefly at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology.

In 1992, he left the institute and devoted himself full-time to Asha’s larger purpose: to bring about socio-economic change in India through education.