The camp of former president and now Rep. Gloria Arroyo of Pampanga province urged the Sandiganbayan to go easy on imposing restrictions on the detained lawmaker.

Lawyer Raul Lambino, Arroyo’s spokesman for legal affairs, made the call a day after the former leader asked the anti-graft court to allow her to spend Christmas with her family and constituents in her hometown Lubao, Pampanga.

Arroyo has been detained at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City since October for a plunder charge filed against her over the alleged misuse of P366 million intelligence fund of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office. She has been nursing a bone ailment since July 2011.

“If ever she will be allowed to go [to Lubao], the conditions that come with it should not be impossible to achieve. We sought for a six-hour [furlough] for her to visit her parents’ grave, it was granted.

But the conditions were so strict that she was made to foot for the expenses for her security from the Philippine National Police and post a P1-million cash bond,” Lambino said during the weekly Serye News Forum in Quezon City.

Lambino was referring to a time in November when Arroyo sought the Sandiganbayan’s permission to allow her to pay a visit to her parents’ tomb at the Libingan ng mga Bayani during the All Souls’ Day.

The court granted her request but she withdrew her motion because she got sick.

“Others who are accused who seek to travel abroad are only made the post P100,000 to P200,000 bond. Why impose airtight conditions on [the] former president? Anybody would be sick if faced with such conditions. It should not be the case,” Lambino added.

House Minority Leader Danilo Suarez of Quezon, a party-mate of Arroyo under the Lakas-CMD, earlier appealed to the Sandiganbayan to grant Christmas furlough to the Pampanga lawmaker for humanitarian reasons.

“The Court should grant it for humanitarian reasons. Of course she would want to be with her family this Christmas, on top of the fact that she is yet to recover from her sickness,” Suarez said in a separate press conference.