THE camp of Vice President Jejomar Binay said Monday it fears this year’s P64-billion fund for the government’s conditional cash transfer program or dole to the poor could be used to bankroll the campaign of Liberal Party presidential bet Manuel Roxas II.
It was Liberal Party stalwart and Caloocan City Rep. Edgar Erice himself who admitted that the CCT program, also known as the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program or 4Ps, would ensure “an easy win” for Roxas in 2016, said Mon Ilagan, spokesman of Binay’s United Nationalist Alliance.
“It only confirms the filthy plan of using the CCT fund after the congressman from Caloocan admitted that the 4Ps is LP’s mechanism to make Roxas win,” Ilagan said.
But Malacañang denied that this year’s dole to the poor would be used to bankroll the LP’s candidates.
“The CCT program has been implemented by the Aquino administration since the start and over the years, we have expanded the number of beneficiaries from 800 thousand families to 4.4-million families,” presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said in a text message to reporters.
“It is a program envisioned to implement the President’s credo of no one should be left behind.”
The CCT program gives families cash for keeping their children in school and bringing them to local health centers for check-ups. It covered four-million households By October 2014.
But Ilagan said he feared the CCT funds would be used for something else.
“The distribution of CCT funds from January to May 2016 will definitely affect voting behavior. No doubt, it has become a legal mechanism to buy their way to Malacañang,” Ilagan said.
He said UNA was also convinced that the P3-trillion national budget for 2016 was nothing more than an LP war chest intended to “turbo-charge” the chances of Roxas and the other LP bets in next year’s elections.
Ilagan also said they had received reports of organized “rumor brigades” systematically spreading stories about a supposed plan to cancel the program.
“This is part of a campaign to scare the beneficiaries into believing that if Vice President Jejomar Binay wins, he will stop the CCT program,” Ilagan said.
He said this was the reason why whenever the UNA team made the rounds, “we make it clear that VP Binay will continue the program” with modifications and “will strengthen it.”