Ambassador Petronila Garcia: Role-Modelling Integrity, Excellence and Simple Living

She walked unceremoniously into the room in her blue jeans and white polo shirt, warmly smiled before she greeted and ushered me into our meeting, or chat rather.  She flew in from Manila to meet me near Pearson International Airport by making good use of a four-hour layover in Toronto before heading back to Ottawa. Anybody would have been swept off with that graciousness. And anybody would have believed that the kind lady welcoming does not have an ounce of condescension in her bones.

By the way, we are speaking of the Philippine Ambassador to Canada, Petronila Garcia, whose life accomplishment is nothing short of fulfilling.

“I am very fulfilled.” Perhaps one of the most enviable words any woman can hear from another woman. Fulfillment is 38 years of a colorful career in the foreign service, gratifying  motherhood to two smart sons, and now in her happy role as a grandmother to an adorable two-year old boy.

Ambassador Petronila speaks of both her family and career with a lot of fondness and pride over what she has done and accomplished.  It helped it seems that she considers herself good at understanding human dynamics from both an anthropological and sociological points of view.

“I am a self-made political scientist,” she declared. Despite a degree in law, she credits her good grasp of human behavior by her ability to think out of the box.  Constructs are useful, she said, but most of the time, there is no science to interpreting human behavior.

“There is only human approach to understanding human interactions, “ she believes.

She cited that even if Filipinos abroad are one in minds and hearts, the perspective with which we should view them may differ depending on where they are elsewhere in the world or may be the situations they find themselves into.  The good Ambassador observed that even in the simple aspect of linguistics, Filipinos in Canada versus Filipinos in Middle East, for example, exhibit some difference in their usage of the Filipino language.

She finds the use of Filipino as a first language is purer in an open society like Canada compared to a closed society where Filipinos strive harder to be more “glocalized” or to blend in order to assimilate faster into the complexities of a new culture that expects them to do so. Canada, which encourages multi-culturalism, gives immigrants more freedom to thrive in their roots and more time to embrace the new culture. Something, not true, of course, in many closed societies in the world.

Fil-Cans’ Shining Moment

Filipinos in Canada are already close to a million now , about half of whom are in Toronto. Ambassador Garcia views that this number should be able to give Filipinos higher leverage.

“This is our shining moment,” she declares proudly.

It is time, she pointed out; Filipinos in Canada should be asking themselves two very important questions – Who are we? What do we want to be?

There is a need to define one’s identity, especially when one is in another country. Surprisingly, or may be not surprisingly, it is actually the young Filipino-Canadians who are more concerned with that, she observed.  Not to discredit the seeds planted and the efforts poured in by the older generations of Filipino-Canadians, she is simply amazed that it is the new generation of Fil-Cans who are passionate about creating and asserting their own identity.

“And they deserve it,” she says.  Fortunately, the young Filipino-Canadians know what they want and all that we need to do is to be their enablers. Now that Filipinos are one of the fastest growing immigrant populations in Canada, this should not be too hard. The youth should be given all the support they need, she believes.

The good Ambassador recalls that she herself was just a young, fresh graduate when she aspired for a career in foreign service. Barely 25 years old, she passed the prestigious foreign service exam in Manila and began a three-year all-around training inside the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).  At 28, she was already Third Secretary and Consul in Singapore and then Sydney, Australia as Consul.

Pursuing Opportunities, Raising Kids

In pursuit of her own career goals, there were opportunities that were either offered to her or she applied for, she related. She then paused to express the thought that sometimes we earnestly seek for an opportunity but never come to think that it may not be the right one or good one for us. She recalled being offered several posts early on in her career which she did not accept. One time she eagerly applied for a post – but later gave her one of the biggest scares of her life. In this stint, she fell victim to a random case of robbery incident, and met a bullet but luckily survived. Yet, there are also assignments that one does not ask for but proved to be one of the best ones. One such was her stint in South Korea when its economy was very, very strong that it was such a pleasant ride. But not for long.

If the world remembers, there was what we called the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997. Accounts noted that this infamous crisis started when the baht collapsed immediately after the bankruptcy of the Thai government due to its huge burden of foreign debt. The effects of the crisis snowballed to most Asian countries, including the Philippines in the Southeast, which saw huge devaluations of their currencies. While Singapore and Taiwan were said to be the least hit, the crisis had its own domino effects in the world that even powers like Russia and the US also felt the jolt. Japan was also affected but less significantly than that of Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea.

She related that in  South Korea during the crisis, working Koreans were let go by their companies and given early retirement benefits. Aside from the famous gold-collecting campaign among patriotic Koreans, it can be recalled that this was also the time that a number of Koreans began considering using their monies to start their own businesses, many of whom chose the Philippines. Thus, the influx of South Koreans in the Philippines in the late 90s, shortly after the crisis.

While the Ambassador cherished her time in South Korea, around that time, too, was a period of reassessment for her on how to continue raising her two boys – Angelo Victor, 11, and Jose Gabriel, five, at that time.

“I started thinking they should be touching base with their Filipino culture,” she related.  Having travelled with her wherever work took her, the kids, she thought, needed to learn about and go back to their roots. Thus, in 1999, she opted to be sent back to Manila, where she stayed for five years till 2004. Within this period, she was offered some posts but her mind was fixated on that family goal. Not until something came up.

The next offer was wrapped in silver with an ambassadorial post in Egypt, her first in this capacity. Thinking she had given her sons the chance to plant some new roots in the Philippines and re-discover their being Filipinos, she took her own chance to move forward further with her career in the foreign service by taking on the offer. And there was no stopping her from there.

Learnings from Each Post

From Egypt in 2004-2007 with concurrent position in The Sudan, she was moved to Israel where she stayed till 2011. After that was a Manila posting as Assistant Secretary for Middle East and the African Affairs from 2011 to July 2014. August 2014 was when she assumed the post as Ambassador to Canada.

Egypt also proved to be a memorable assignment because she was there when the Arab Spring was just in the air and ready to explode in Egypt. We will all recall the Arab Spring as a series of uprisings against oppressive governments that first broke out in the Spring of 2011 (thus, the monicker) in Tunisia and then in other Muslim countries like Morocco, Syria, Libya, Bahrain, and Egypt.

Must be both a challenging and scary time, I thought. True, she said. The Ambassador remembered having spent quite an effort to do her “due diligence” of Egypt by carefully studying all exit points and making sure vehicles will be readily available for the getaway of Embassy personnel and other Filipinos when revolution explodes. Arab Spring finally exploded into a revolution in Egypt in February 2011 that led to the downfall of Hosni Mubarak after being stormed with 18 days of mass protests by millions of Egyptians.  However, before said revolution in Egypt, Ambassador Garcia had been moved to Israel.

“Inside Israel is one of the safest places, if not the safest, where one could ever be in the world,” the Ambassador states definitively.

Certainly, because of the constant threats, imminent dangers and perils of war that they face every day, Israelis are constantly aware, prepared and vigilant.  She related a story when she was at one time visiting a friend in downtown Tel Aviv. From the balcony of her friend’s apartment, they saw a backpack left on a bench by the sidewalk. For about an hour or so, nobody touched that backpack. Then government contingents came by, with one vehicle releasing a robot that walked towards the bench, picked up and inspected the backpack. Although it proved to be a false alarm as shortly after, the unsuspecting owner of the backpack came back for his bag and claimed it, we can surmise the fact that nothing there is left to chance, when it comes to security matters.

Maybe we could consider that as one serious “creative problem-solving” technique she has personally witnessed and something that the good Ambassador finds herself needing to apply in her job every now and then. When she was made to handle Middle East and African Affairs in her Manila posting, she remarked,  she endeavoured to come up with creative solutions, as she always does, to some issues brought to her attention. As one who is used to thinking out of the box, sometimes only a solution that has never been tried should be tried. Or a decision that normally is done, should not be jumped into. If, for example, the Philippine government is ready to send a plane to evacuate people and no one signs up to go home despite announcements, it is definitely not okay to send Manila a go-signal to send in the plane immediately. And this has happened to her, she related.

Of Consuls and Empowering Youth, Serving Community

But as far as Canada is concerned, Ambassador Garcia believes that all her consul generals are very brilliant and professional career diplomats. “I don’t need to micro-manage anybody,” she proudly said. They have regular and annual consultations where they streamline procedures by sharing best practices and making sure these processes are harmonized. She is just there to support them, may be lend strength to them with her presence sometimes. It helps perhaps that she is also now the Dean of the Asia Pacific Ambassadors which is an organization of all ambassadors in the Asia-Pacific, also being most senior.  She also emphasizes to her consul generals the importance of community service like their outreach consular services.

To this, she will also have bias for the empowerment of the young Fil-Canadians. “We have to help them bloom and nurture them,” again she pointed out. Just as she is most concerned for the welfare of her own sons and grandson, she wants to make sure that the young are enabled.

As for her own future, she sees herself visiting in North America for the most part because her sons seemed decided to be in this part of the world. But there is still her mother and her siblings to go back to in Bacolod having hailed from Negros Occidental, aside from her own little investment in properties in the Philippines which she hopes to make little money from when she is no longer working.

After all, she thinks her savviness with property acquisition could be the best legacy she will leave as a Philippine ambassador to Canada.  After renting since the 70s for a whooping $27,000 a month and being tossed around by a toffee-nosed landlord who did not recognize loyal patronage, she spearheaded the purchase of a property in Ottawa to permanently house the Embassy Office.

The best legacy may be. But not better than her own legacy of integrity, excellence and unwavering dedication to duty, amidst her simple lifestyle for a good 38 years and counting.