Roque looks forward to party list role
Lawyer and human rights advocate Harry Roque has said goodbye to his academic life to sign up as first nominee of the party list KABAYAN which stands for Kalusugan, Pabahay at Kabuhayan.
"My family decided two months ago and Vice president Binay accepted my decision to run as partylist representative," Roque said in an interview.
He was reported earlier to be eyeing the Senate under the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA).
In his personal blog, Roque wrote “I offer myself to our people as a member of Congress on a platform to promote and protect not just political and civil rights, but more importantly, Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.
Roque, the counsel for media victims in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre and the family of transgender Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude will run with his former law students and fellow human rights advocates as nominees of KABAYAN.
They vow to scrutinize the budget process.
“I have devoted 35 years of my life using the law as a tool for the protection of Political and Civil Rights. Truth though is much as we have had many gains by way of jurisprudence, public interest litigation cannot address the root causes of why our political and civil rights are violated. 35 years later, the problems remain the same; poverty, lack of livelihood, lack of housing, all of which lead to lack of hope,” Roque added.
He thinks he will be more effective in the House of Representatives because Kabayan partylist focuses on health, housing, and livelihood.
"The persistent problem of poverty can be solved with policies and yearly budget allocated by congress,” he added.
“That is why I am running under a party-list committed to the progressive realization of economic, social and cultural rights. It is only through the implementation of these rights that we can break the feudal hold of warlords in provinces like Maguindanao,” Roque wrote.
Roque is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the UP College of Law, and the London School for Economics and Political Science.(CCE)