AN Independent Citizens Audit Commission should be created to examine government’s books to find out its real debt situation, said the People Against Illegitimate Debt (PAID!) over the weekend.

The group, composed of more than a hundred local and national organizations, said it is alarmed over the extent of public debt that the administration of President Arroyo has accumulated, which it placed at P3.8 trillion or $81.6 billion as of last November.

"More than just the burden of payments, there is the fundamental injustice. While citizens are forced to pay, much of these debts were contracted without full public transparency and accountability, and without full compliance with democratic processes, and did not benefit the people," the group said in a manifesto.

"Many loans were accompanied by unfair terms and harmful conditionalities. A significant number has been tainted with deception and fraud, or used for questionable purposes such as financing of ill-designed, unnecessary, and even inoperable programs, or repayment of earlier loans for onerous projects such as the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant," it said.

PAID! said the proposed debt audit commission should conduct a comprehensive review of all public debt and contingent liabilities, aiming for an accurate historical, contextual and comprehensive examination of the debt problem.

Moreover, the audit team should identify immediate steps as well as far-reaching solutions towards eradicating the debt burden and correcting structural and systemic flaws and deficiencies that contributed to debt accumulation and domination, it said.

Citing the "stampede of white elephants" that rocked the administration last year, PAID! convenor Lidy Nacpil said it is time the people addressed the debt problem.

"Last year, we witnessed, through the media, a lot of controversial loan agreements entered into by the current administration as well as its predecessors. The ZTE-National Broadband Network project, the World Bank textbook scam, the Cyber Education project and the Austrian medical waste loan are just some examples of these illegitimate debts," Nacpil, also vice president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition, said.

The mothballed Austrian incinerator project, according to EcoWaste Coalition’s Manny Calonzo, is a "toxic debt" which will have an environmental impact on succeeding generations.

The coalition is calling also for reparations for the ecological damage it caused during the technology’s two-year operation. – Job Realubit