School head in hot water over Binay ‘Tsona’

The Cavite State University (CvSU) may have not violated any policy of the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd), but its president is in hot water for allegedly violating a Civil Service Commission (CSC) rule by engaging in partisan politics.

CHEd Commissioner Patricia Licuanan yesterday said the university’s board of regents will investigate next week whether CvSU president Divinia Chavez “was playing partisan politics” when Vice President Jejomar Binay delivered his “true” State of the Nation Address (Tsona) in the school on Monday in front of an audience composed mostly of junior and senior students.

Chavez drew flak after a photo of a memorandum signed by her requiring the students to attend a “student assembly” circulated online shortly after the Vice President’s speech. She, however, said she was unaware that Binay was invited to the event by the school’s student council.

Licuanan noted that the Vice President’s presence at the university in a supposed student function became an issue because “there was a bit of an uproar” from the students.

“Students were complaining in social media…Basically, that was the issue. So we wanted to see whether, in fact, the president was playing partisan politics that would have been a violation of civil service rules,” Licuanan said in an interview on Friday.