For Philippine Ambassador to the UAE Alfonso Ferdinand A. Ver, this year’s Independence Day gathering carried a weight beyond the music and the crowds. It was proof, he said, of a community that did not leave when things grew uncertain.
Speaking on the sidelines of Kalayaan 2026 at the Dubai World Trade Centre on June 7 with TGFM, where an estimated 60,000 Filipinos turned out, Ver said the celebration affirmed the community’s decision to remain in the country through successive hardships — from financial and economic downturns to the COVID-19 pandemic and, most recently, regional tensions in the Middle East.
“We were not the first to run. We stayed because we know we are protected,” he said in Filipino, recalling how Filipinos repeatedly signaled their commitment during each crisis. “In all those crises we stayed, and we said we are with you, and you can count on us.”
Ver tied the moment to the speech delivered earlier by Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence, who thanked the Filipino community for its contribution to the UAE. The ambassador said he returned the gesture, thanking Emiratis for making the day possible. One Filipino attendee, he recounted, remarked that the two appeared to have coordinated their messages.
For Ver, the day was less a commemoration of the past than a measure of how far the community has come. “This is not only a celebration for us, it’s a celebration of how we’ve achieved and how we have prospered and how we have contributed,” he said, crediting an environment that he said allows Filipinos to pursue their ambitions and take part in the wider society.
He framed the milestone against 52 years of formal ties between Manila and Abu Dhabi, established in 1974, noting the widening scope of cooperation across artificial intelligence, renewable energy and defence, as well as the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement signed in January. Yet for all the formal accords, Ver said the relationship rests on something simpler.
“At root and the foundation of it all is the people to people” connection, he said — the mutual recognition, friendship and acceptance between Filipinos and Emiratis that, in his view, holds everything else together.
