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From foreign service officers to ambassadors and career ministers quietly working to aid Filipinos both at home and overseas, 6 personnel from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) were bestowed with the Gawad Mabini awards on Friday, December 11.
Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr conferred the honors on behalf of President Rodrigo Duterte in a virtual and in-person ceremony at the DFA headquarters, where he praised the awardees for their “total dedication, not in spurts but consistently of the highest quality over a near lifetime.”
“These awards are symbols of what those who received them were willing to pay for them out of their very real tireless work,” Locsin said.
Named after Apolinario Mabini, the first foreign affairs secretary of the First Republic of the Philippines, the Gawad Mabini and the Order of Sikatuna awards are conferred on Filipinos who have rendered distinguished foreign service.
Order of Sikatuna, Rank of Datu
Locsin posthumously honored the late Philippine ambassador to Lebanon Bernardita Catalla with the Order of Sikatuna, with the Rank of Datu, Gold Distinction.
Catalla, a career diplomat for 27 years, died in a hospital in Beirut last April due to complications arising from COVID-19. Catalla’s brother and sister-in-law received the award on her behalf.
Aside from Lebanon, Catalla held key posts in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and Jakarta, and was passport director where she delivered frontline service to millions of Filipinos.
As assistant consul general in Hong Kong from 2014 to 2017, Catalla “actively sided with rights groups in the fight to ban domestic workers from cleaning windows in high-rise buildings” as it had resulted in several deaths, said the DFA. The Hong Kong government later introduced the ban in 2016.
“Bernie’s reputation as a diplomat who genuinely cared for Filipinos abroad is inimitable…. Foreign diplomats, at first meeting, poured out praises of her as truly one of the select corps of diplomats whose life and work are marked as much by real helpfulness as learning,” Locsin said.
Gawad Mabini with Rank of Dakilang Kamanong
Philippine Ambassador to China Jose Santiago Sta Romana received this year’s Gawad Mabini with the Rank of Dakilang Kamanong, for his service that enabled the Philippines and China to develop productive relations despite challenges such as the two countries’ maritime dispute.
In awarding Sta Romana, Locsin praised him as an “invaluable asset to the Philippine foreign service.” Before being named as an ambassador, Sta Romana was a veteran journalist who covered China for over 30 years.
“His deep expertise and knowledge of China has been a key element in the successful conduct of our bilateral relations with that country,” Locsin said.
“His success, in no small part is due to the life he chose to live in China through the worst of times; and when better times came and he might have come home, he chose to stay and go on learning so as to go on serving his country better and better.”
Under Sta Romana’s leadership, the signing of several economic agreements saw the Philippines becoming China’s second biggest trading partner in 2019, the DFA said.
Gawad Mabini with Rank of Dakilang Kasugo
From the DFA’s Office of Migrant Workers Affairs (OUMWA), Career Minister Iris Arribas received the Gawad Mabini with the Rank of Dakilang Kasugo or Commander.
Arribas led the repatriation of thousands of stranded Filipino workers from Saudi Arabia. He also collaborated with several government agencies to mount the “Job Fair sa DFA,” which sought to help displaced overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) find jobs in the Philippines.
Gawad Mabini with Rank of Kasugo
Also from the DFA’s OUMWA, Foreign Service Staff Officer IV Arnaldo Mahor was awarded the Gawad Mabini with the Rank of Kasugo for his dedication to assisting Filipinos in distress.
Mahor joined the agency’s rapid response teams twice to repatriate Filipinos with expired visas during the amnesty period in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, and again to repatriate over 7,000 OFWs stranded in Tripoli, Libya.
Mahor also developed a system that saw over P159 million disbursed for 58,680 cases involving repatriation, medical, and welfare assistance, and other activities to support OFWs in Saudi Arabia.
Two foreign service staff employees from the Philippine Consulate General in Shanghai, Sanny Darren Bejarin and Mark Anthony Geguera, also received the Gawad Mabini with the Rank of Kasugo for volunteering to travel to Wuhan, China, in January 2020. Wuhan was ground zero of the coronavirus pandemic, with the first COVID-19 cases reported in the city.
Bejarin and Geguera evacuated hundreds of Filipinos, including those who were undocumented, by negotiating with local authorities for their exit visas and flight clearances.
Locsin praised Bejarin and Guegara for being at the “forefront” of the DFA’s COVID-19 response “at a time when our knowledge of the virus was nil.”
“In spite of the risks, they went to Wuhan, then the epicenter of the virus, to safely evacuate our countrymen,” the DFA chief said.
“We are proud to serve alongside you, and we are inspired to match your example in our work every day.” – Rappler.com
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