A royal affair to remember

It’s not every day that the once highly influential and powerful Sultanate of Sulu and North Borneo would confer royal titles on ordinary mortals. But recently, the Sultanate broke tradition and, for the first time, bestowed such royal titles on a truly deserving couple.

So to the sound of ancient and ethnic Muslim gongs and kulintang reverberating all over Makati City, Yolanda Ortega Stern, president of the US-based Federation of Philippine-American Chambers of Commerce, was given the royal title of "princess" and made ambassador-at-large and extraordinaire and plenipotentiary. She also assumed the royal name of Dayang Dayang Sitti Fatimah Tasmira Yolanda Mandi Kiram or Princess Yolanda Mandi Kiram for short.

Her husband, Dr. Thomas Stern, president of the One World Institute and author of several significant books, was made "Prince" or "Datu" and appointed the Sultanate’s special representative in the US.

During the conferment, the Stern couple — who has given donations amounting to millions of US dollars by way of medicines, wheelchairs and medical missions not only to the Sultan’s Mindanao constituents but to the entire Philippines without fanfare, without publicity — was also made adopted son and daughter of Sultan Kiram.

Guests from various embassies and govenment offices were in attendance.