Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson on Thursday said the central issue in his criticism of former Senate president Alan Peter Cayetano’s 28-day tenure was the absence of legislative work, not the chamber’s day-to-day expenses.
“Taxpayers’ money was wasted because there was zero output during Cayetano’s watch,” Lacson said in a post on X, responding to Cayetano’s defense that the Senate’s roughly P25-million daily operating cost would have been incurred no matter who held the presidency.
Lacson acknowledged the point but rejected it as a deflection. “It is true that whoever served as SP would have incurred similar expenses. But the issue is output — working in plenary instead of boycotting sessions, passing laws instead of livestreaming on Facebook,” he said.
Earlier Thursday, Lacson placed the cost of Cayetano’s leadership at an estimated P700 million, a figure he derived by multiplying the chamber’s daily operating expenses by the 28 session days Cayetano led the Senate. He attributed the P25-million daily estimate to Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, now the Senate president, who cited the figure as former finance committee chairman during deliberations on the 2026 General Appropriations Act.
Lacson tied the alleged waste to a series of disruptions during the period: shots fired inside the Senate complex two days after Cayetano assumed the post, the escape of Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa while under the chamber’s “protective custody” despite an International Criminal Court arrest warrant, a boycott of plenary sessions by senators allied with Cayetano, an alleged failed destabilization attempt, and what he called “bogus” committee hearings.
Cayetano, now the minority leader, pushed back in a Facebook Live broadcast, denying that his bloc had been idle. “What they say is that we didn’t work; there’s no truth to it. It’s just a lie. We never stopped working. The question is, what are we working on? That’s nation-building,” he said. In a separate response, the Manila Bulletin reported, he dismissed Lacson’s computation as “simplistic” and accused him of “intellectual dishonesty” for implying the full amount was attributable to his term.
The leadership changed hands on June 3 after Sen. Francis Escudero moved to the minority bloc to form a quorum and elect Gatchalian as acting Senate president, with Gatchalian formally elected during a special session on June 17. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he hoped the Senate would now run more smoothly and return to legislative business, noting that the leadership row had stalled deliberations on priority bills and government appointments.
