Take the cash because it is government money, but vote for the candidates of your choice anyway.
This was the advice Vice President Jejomar Binay gave his supporters in Barangay San Andres, Cainta, and Angono, Rizal, on Sunday.
“My appeal to you is, do not embarrass them. Take it, that’s money from the country’s coffers. As we say in Makati, take the money, put it in your pocket, but vote for whom you want,” said Binay, who is facing multiple corruption allegations from his time as Makati City mayor.
READ: Binay: Poverty, not corruption, is PH’s ‘moral problem’
Binay did not explain how money from the government coffers could end up in a candidate’s hands.
READ: Graft, corruption not the same, Binay tells students
Even as he urged his listeners to accept money from politicians, the spokesperson of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA), Binay’s party, accused the administration of engaging in vote-buying.
UNA spokesperson Mon Ilagan said the Binay camp had received reports of vote-buying by the administration in Tagbilaran, Bohol, Nueva Ecija, and “other local government units.”
He said the vote-buying was being done through the “bottom-up budgeting” process and the 4Ps program, the Aquino administration’s centerpiece antipoverty conditional cash transfer program.
In the case of the first, Ilagan said those buying votes would ask the barangays what their population is and “add a zero to it.”
“And that will be [the number of their] programs or projects,” he said.
In the case of the second, he said the vote-buyers tell the people that if Binay wins, the 4Ps program would be discontinued.
This is why Binay is going around saying that if he wins, he will not just continue the 4Ps program but will even expand it, Ilagan said. TVJ
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