Senators advised on Friday the Arroyo administration to stop in engaging in any ‘’midnight’’ sale of government assets as the constitutionally-prescribed six-year term of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ends after June 30, 2010, or 50 days after the May 10, 2010 national and local elections.

“Why is the administration in a huff — in a mad rush — to sell those assets in the closing months of its incumbency?’’ Sen. Joker P. Arroyo asked.

Arroyo also asked why Malacañang allows the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) to go on a selling binge of ill-gotten wealth properties and other government assets.

As executive secretary during the revolutionary government of the late President Corazon Aquino, Arroyo said the executive order creating the PCGG empowered it to recover the ill-gotten wealth of the late President Marcos and his cronies but ‘’it did not authorize the PCGG go be the seller or disposer of government assets, ill-gotten or otherwise.’’

“The present PCGG acts like an overeager used car salesman. Instead of focusing its energies on marshalling the evidence to successfully prosecute the government cases against the Marcos cronies, has become so distracted, brokering deals and showing undue interest in the sale of crony assets recovered not even by the present PCGG but by the past PCGGs under the likes of Sen. Jovito Salonga, Ramon Diaz and Haydee Yorac,’’ Arroyo said.

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel Jr. said the ‘’midnight sale’’ of government assets during the last few months of the Arroyo administration was ‘’designed more to fatten the pockets of unscrupulous bureaucrats than to replenish and estabilize the public treasury.’’ (Mario B. Casayuran)