More public funds to be used to defend the fake president

This is depressing, if true.

While President Arroyo had said critics should bring their concerns to Congress, apparently through the impeachment process, she has also authorized the release of P2.5 billion in road users' tax to fund a campaign that would stop the impeachment complaint lodged against her by the political opposition.

Former Sen. Francisco Tatad over the weekend said the Chief Executive's move to resort to the massive use of pubic funds to stop the impeachment process “threatens to discredit not only the entire process but also the entire House, despite the exceptional efforts of the minority to make sure that no crime against the people goes unpunished.”

“Such blatant abuse of power, which constitutes a continuing impeachable crime, could convince the various militant groups that the only solution left is the extra-constitutional, which could include the outright abolition of Congress,” Tatad warned.

The former senator said reports reaching the Citizens vs Corruption Task Force showed that eight favored congressmen were put in charge of the distribution of the P2.5-billion fund.

Tatad called on the members of the minority bloc in the House to be extremely vigilant in monitoring the misuse of public funds to defeat the ongoing constitutional process.

At least P2.3 billion of the road users' tax was openly used during the 2004 presidential campaign to fund Mrs. Arroyo's “Kalsada Natin, Alagaan Natin” project, which employed at least four workers per kilometer of road, ostensibly to help maintain the road, but who acted as “walking posters” for Mrs. Arroyo and were also ordered to destroy political posters of opposition candidates.

Rep. Eulogio “Amang” Magsaysay of the party-list Alliance of Volunteer Educators earlier said two congressmen and three other private individuals had offered him P500,000.00 in cash in exchange for his refusal to sign the impeachment complaint.

Magsaysay, during a press conference, also accused the Arroyo administration of offering him another congressional seat for his party-list group if he does not endorse the complaint against Mrs. Arroyo.

Those who offered him the bribe, according to him, were people who were close to him and that they were very “diplomatic.”