Senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson has confirmed that he was among the minority bloc senators who failed to send a welfare check to Senator Pia Cayetano and other majority members following the May 13 shooting incident inside the Senate complex — but he offered a pointed explanation for why.
Speaking on DZBB on Friday, May 22, Lacson said he voluntarily stepped out of the Senate’s shared WhatsApp group chat the moment the chamber’s leadership changed, which cut him off from the communication channels where such messages would have been sent.
“All members of the majority and the minority are in the 20th Congress chat group,” Lacson noted, referencing the group he left. He attributed his exit to the shift in Senate leadership that installed Senator Alan Peter Cayetano as the new Senate president, replacing former Senate president and now Minority Flood Leader Vicente “Tito” Sotto III. That May 11 leadership change caught Lacson and members of the former majority bloc off guard, and his departure from the WhatsApp group followed shortly after.
The admission makes Lacson one of the few minority senators to explicitly acknowledge not reaching out — though the circumstances surrounding that silence drew sharp contrast with other members of the minority. Senator Erwin Tulfo had earlier disputed Cayetano’s claim, citing messages he and fellow senators Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan, Bam Aquino, and Sherwin Gatchalian sent through the shared group chat on the night of the incident. Tulfo said he personally typed “Praying for all of you” at around 9:57 p.m., and that Senator Camille Villar later replied to the group saying they were all fine.
But Lacson’s admission came wrapped in a sharper retort. A day before his radio interview, he had already posted his reaction on X, questioning the premise of Cayetano’s grievance altogether.
“Paano mo ba naman kukumustahin ang mga masasayang nagkakainan, nagkakape at naka FB live pa para pagbintangan ang minority bloc na may alam daw sa putukan ng baril sa Senado?” Lacson wrote on May 21, questioning how one could be expected to check on people who appeared to be dining, drinking coffee, and going live on Facebook — all while accusing the minority of foreknowledge of the gunfire.
Cayetano had earlier said she felt hurt that colleagues she had known for years — some for up to two decades — never personally reached out. “Some of you I’ve known for 20 years, 10 years and I didn’t even hear any of you say, ‘Kumusta na kayo dyan?’ Napakasakit nu’n sa akin, sobrang sakit,” she said. Those remarks came during a tense Wednesday session where she broke down in tears responding to Senator Risa Hontiveros, who had suggested the Senate was moving on as if the shooting had not occurred.
Screenshots of the group chat have since circulated online, showing that minority senators did send messages of concern that night. Lacson’s case, by his own account, was different — not a matter of indifference, but of having already exited the group before the incident took place.
In the reorganization that followed the leadership change, Lacson was stripped of his chairmanship of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, which was handed over to Pia Cayetano. The panel had been investigating corruption in flood control projects during his tenure.
