“ECCE HOMO, HON. ATTY. A. ALVIN J. UY, ECE”
(Erico Joseph T. Cañete)
The State of the Municipality Address (SOMA) is the time when the Local Chief Executive (LCE) renders his executive report to the legislative council as required by Sections 444 (b) (1) (iii), 455 (b) (1) (iii), and 465 (b) (1) (iii) of RA 7160. The executive reports of the LCE consist of two parts: the accomplishments of their LGUs of the preceding year, and the the proposed plans, programs, activities, and services of the LCE for the coming year. This will also serve as basis for the drafting of the legislative agenda of the SB.
The good mayor of the Municipality of Baclayon, Hon. Atty. Alvin J. Uy, ECE, delivered his SOMA on July 23, 2024. Reports of his copious accomplishments in the field of education, health, nutrition and sanitation, waterworks, social services, infrastructures, solid waste management, municipal disaster risk reduction and management, agriculture, tourism, inter alia were reported and discussed.
While the LCE was delivering his report, my mind wondered on the great responsibility of the LCE as a medium to cater to the existential end of society; the common good. It’s not easy for he must be equipped with moral virtues and principles to be able to lead forth society to utopia.
These are some of his revealing virtues. Ecce homo!
The Romans were conquerors because their soldiers lived with the conviction that their military exercise should be a deadly battle so that their real battle would be an easy military exercise. Being a lawyer and an engineer by profession are excellent shields for any legal concerns that may encounter in his executive function, while an IQ in engineering matters as a weapon to build infrastructures.
The title “honorable” inherent to an executive position demands that one should have a quality of sterling nobility. The word came to mean a person of genuinely high quality or value, a person showing high moral ideals characterized by greatness of character. He is honorable because he is equipped with sincere ideals translated to the realities of day-to-day decisions and actions in carrying his executive responsibility.
Being in the executive position, he developed a sense of wonder and discovered that life is a great human adventure. He sits in his office. He meets distinct personalities with different agenda, endowments, limitations, absorbs individual or societal concerns, among others. At the end of the day or term, he has the raw materials for life story of his constituents full of human drama with great potentials to become best sellers.
The man has deepened his humanity. He uses his intellect to understand what is good for his constituency and makes sure he executes it with the will power to choose the real good for them irrespective of political colors.
A down to earth fellow (a sense of humus) who attributes accomplishments not to himself but to the LGU’s hierarchy of position from the top to the bottom.
He is a man of integrity. The word signifies that he has the quality of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or earnestness of one’s actions.
The reward of being a LCE is not immediate. On top of that, with respect to the Principle of Non-Contradiction, you even have to give what you don’t have. Yet, at the end, the greater delight is when you see your constituents happy by the sincerest service you rendered to them.
Keep up the good work.
Finally, I agree with his better half Dr. Em Em Uy, MD who posted on FB after the SONA, “Public servant par excellence.”
Ecce homo, Hon. Atty. A. Alvin J. Uy, ECE, a servant of your servant’s servant.