THIS series is intended to provide our local candidates a platform to communicate their message to the electorate. I invite our readers to interact with us in a healthy discussion of the issues raised in each of my installments. Please visit our Facebook page SunstarCDO. Again, this is not an endorsement, just a ground for us to know our candidates a little better as they lay down their platforms for the 2019 midterm elections.
Over the weekend, I was able to have an audience with Congressman Klarex Uy, the representative of District 1. It was my first time to meet him and he registered as someone who's not your typical lawmaker; no air, so calm, and quite grounded.
After a short introduction I dove right in to asking him why he is running for a third term. He simply said to leave a legacy. My follow up question "on what?" made him start to open up and share his journey in public service. Having been a barangay chief in his early years, Klarex' exposure to local governance was the real grassroots. "This house (pertaining to his residence) is everyone's house. I meet more people here than in my office," the congressman said.
True enough, he is not your typical lawmaker because he prefers more to work in his district than in Congress. He shares that Congress is very partisan, your political party somehow dictates the outcome of every deliberation, you only have one vote and it does not count much. The real problem is back home, where people need social services on a daily basis. For him, the best that he could do is to lobby funds and bring it home in the form of services to the people in both hard and soft infrastructures. He was very hesitant to enumerate the projects he has made over the years and the organizations he has helped as he felt awkward bragging them. It was his staff who shared to me a litany his accomplished classrooms, roads, and bridges in the different barangays and the different cooperatives he helped sustain to generate local jobs.
More than the infrastructure, he seemed more eager to share his time to listen to the problems of the people who are asking for help and making sure that they get the help they need when they go home. His leadership is felt more as a good father tending to the needs of everyone than an eloquent debater in Congress.
On a personal note, I was touched by how warm he received me and how honest and sincere he was in answering all the hard questions I threw on him, even baring the ugly realities in politics, off the record. No wonder why he is endeared by the masses.
I admire his level of immersion to the grassroots and his passion to attend to their needs personally. Only someone who really walks with the lowly can better understand the plight of the poor. And because of the increasing gap between the rich and the poor, people need someone they can run to and be helped at the end of the day. I think that is his best asset as a public servant. I hope his energy on that would not dwindle.
But just like my suggestion with former congressman Rufus, I would still push that if Congressman Klarex ever wins his third term, he can maximize the use of his power as a lawmaker in crafting laws that will not just pay for hospital bills today but will better secure everyone's health in a longer term. And that he would also revisit existing laws that are putting the lowly at a disadvantage and re-craft them to better address our needs as a district and as a nation. Yes, he only has one vote, but with his natural charisma I am sure he can surely attract buy ins.
