And if you elect him, he’ll give you the moon, too

THE campaign promise of government largesse offered up by Vice President Jejomar Binay about a week ago is the sort of stuff that makes political opponents cringe. It should make anyone with an interest in effective, socially healthy policy cringe, too.

As he “officially” opened his campaign in Mandaluyong last Wednesday, Binay made an immediate splash by declaring that, if elected, he would see to it that workers earning P30,000 per month or less are exempted from paying income tax. In addition, he promised to replicate a couple of his popular Makati programs on a national scale and allocate P65 billion for the provision of free school supplies and medicines, and expand the conditional cash transfer (CCT) program. His Liberal Party opponent, whose name I will not state here, has been using this program as a dishonest threat to lower-class voters – to include people aged 60 to 64, as well as “many of our countrymen,” a demographic he did not describe in detail.