Election campaign bickering mars P5k ‘education vouchers’ in Taguig

MANILA, Philippines — Much ado over “education vouchers.”

The political rivalry in Taguig city is in full swing once again, this time, with the word war circling around the P5,000 “education vouchers” the incumbent administration has been distributing to the city’s public high school graduates.

Last Tuesday, incumbent mayor Lani Cayetano’s opponent in the May polls, former city councilor Rica Tinga, called the vouchers a form of “vote-buying,” as they were given out during the election season.

But in a statement released on Wednesday, Cayetano’s camp called Tinga’s accusations “a product of ignorance.”

“How could it be vote-buying if the distribution of education vouchers have been done for two years now and is carried out during graduation rites? People from the Department of Education Taguig-Pateros can attest to the fact that these vouchers were given out during graduation, not during campaign period as claimed by the Tingas,” said Nacionalista Party-Taguig spokesman Darwin Icay.

The vouchers can be converted into cash by the graduates of the city’s 12 public high schools, but only to pay for higher education.

Icay explained that the vouchers were under Cayetano’s scholarship program, responding to Tinga’s challenge that Cayetano explain how it was being funded by the city.

“It’s sad how desperation has pushed Rica and her party mates to politicize a perfectly laudable program,” Icay added.

Tinga is the daughter of Cayetano’s opponent in the 2010 polls,  former Supreme Court Associate Justice Dante Tinga. The elder Tinga lost to Cayetano by a slim 2,420 votes.

A spokesperson for Tinga’s camp, Rommel Tinga, said on Wednesday that “We approve of scholarship programs but it shouldn’t be used for election purposes.”

He maintained that the education vouchers were “suspect,” because such certificates should be given directly to the schools, and they should be distributed “before and after the election period.”

“We’re talking about more than P37 million in public funds. Any citizen has a right to complain,” he said.

Taguig has 7, 243 public high school graduates this year.