Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson believes he can get nine members of the blue ribbon committee that he chairs to sign its controversial partial report on the corruption in flood control and other infrastructure projects.
So far, only he and three others — Senators Bam Aquino, Risa Hontiveros, and Francis Pangilinan — have signed the partial report. They are all members of the majority who have expressed outrage over the corruption scandal involving government officials and private contractors.
“I think I can get the remaining five more,” Lacson said in a text message to CoverStory on Thursday. He needs nine of the committee members to sign the report so it can be reported out to the Senate plenary, deliberated on, and adopted.
Lacson presided over the blue ribbon committee’s hearings on how billions of pesos in taxpayer money have been stolen through substandard and nonexistent flood control projects. The hearings exposed the alleged budget insertions of billions of pesos for ghost and anomalous flood control projects, particularly in Bulacan, during the deliberations on the general appropriations for 2025, and indicated the involvement of government officials, politicians, and contractors in a kickback scheme.
The blue ribbon committee’s draft partial report drew controversy because of its recommendation that Senators Chiz Escudero, Jinggoy Estrada, and Joel Villanueva be subjected to preliminary investigation by the Office of the Ombudsman for their alleged links to the flood control anomalies.
Asked if the other senators’ hesitation to sign the partial report was due to a reluctance to offend their three colleagues, Lacson said: “I don’t want to speculate, but I can’t think of any other reason.”
Roll call
The Senate blue ribbon committee has 17 members: Senators Pia Cayetano, JV Ejercito, Sherwin Gatchalian, Bong Go, Lito Lapid, Loren Legarda, Rodante Marcoleta, Imee Marcos, Robin Padilla, Erwin and Raffy Tulfo, and Mark Villar, apart from Aquino, Hontiveros, Pangilinan, Estrada and Villanueva.
Go, Marcoleta, Marcos and Padilla are part of the minority that also includes Escudero, Estrada, and Villanueva.
Last Tuesday, Lacson challenged Marcoleta to sign the partial report after the latter asked if he would call certain personalities to testify at the blue ribbon committee’s inquiry.
Marcoleta wants the committee to call former Palace undersecretary Adrian Bersamin, who has allegedly confirmed that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. also sought kickbacks from flood control funds.
Lacson, who had previously said that Bersamin was not implicated in the committee hearings, referred Marcoleta’s request to the Senate rules committee.
Responding to Lacson’s privilege speech against him on Tuesday, Marcoleta said he has not signed the committee’s partial report because the committee chair himself had not done so. Lacson explained that 20 copies of the report had been distributed to the senators so they could affix their signatures separately.
‘In the trash can’
Meanwhile, Senate President Vicente Sotto III shrugged off a move by three lawyers to compel the blue ribbon committee to divulge the contents of its draft partial report on the flood control investigation.
The lawyers — Eldridge Aceron, Sikini Labastilla, and Purificacion Bartolome-Bernabe — filed a petition at the Supreme Court on March 2 challenging the committee’s denial of their request to release the draft report. They asked the high court to compel Lacson’s committee to release the draft report as it existed in Feb. 4-6.
But according to Sotto, that draft has since been “placed in the trash can.”
“There is now the official report circulating,” the Senate President told CoverStory, referring to the partial report that Lacson has distributed to the committee members for signing.
Sotto issued the reminder that the initial report was just a draft and had no legal bearing in the Senate. “That’s the reason the few who signed [earlier] withdrew their signatures,” he said. CS
