"If you can’t fool them, buy them"

Motto yan ng Arroyo administartion.

It appears to me, however, that just as those who believe that GMA either has no right or has lost her right to claim the highest office of the land are unwilling to accept that the story indeed ends here, GMA and her allies, too, are not simply sitting pretty and acting like they have no more reason to look over their shoulders.

My basis for saying this is the way the President has been on a spending spree lately: granting housing to Scout Rangers through Vice President Noli de Castro on one day, announcing the release of P1 billion for the PNP on another, declaring a bonus (or was it a pay hike) for government employees on again another day, and releasing huge sums of money for an anti-poverty campaign to start the first quarter of this year.

The way these announcements have been done in a staccato manner you’d think the government is awash in cash. Maybe it is — but that’s cash that isn’t even enough to pay our obligations, since, as we know, this government and its predecessors have been in the red for so long. Yet the money — money, in effect, which we don’t have — is being spent left and right; and while one may be tempted to applaud the action that is happening all around us one must in fact be wary of all these sound and fury which may signify something…

Something like preparing the groundwork for a push for Charter Change in the middle or latter half of this year. And that preparation is via the tried and tested method of buying support: "If you can’t fool them, buy them."

More from Lito Banayo: Buying her way

Read this too: Arroyo's Perpetual campaign

-- Go check MLQ3's blog and just keep scrolling.

-- MLQ3 answers Jose Abueva.

-- Ellen Tordesillas: Yes to "coups", no to juntas?

-- Ka Ernie Maceda is always worth reading. Ready na ready na raw si Mar Roxas na tumakbo bilang presidente.

Read this too from manong.

-- Before you start drinking that kool aid from the Arroyo admin re our economy, read this first.

-- So pati yung mga rallies sa Plaza Miranda, nakakatikim rin ng CPR. I do recall the PNP's Bulaong saying na rallies held even in Plaza Miranda will be dispersed if it causes huge traffic jams. Whatever.

-- Herman Tiu Laurel: Erap should take over raw. Sorry HTL, but I disagree. New elections ang sagot, not the re-installation of Mr. Estrada.