Mayor Vico Sotto has his overpriced P9.6-billion city hall. Engineer Selwyn Lao finds the price anomalous and corrupt. A couple of top-notch construction engineers also say so.

Vico Sotto’s display of widespread vote-buying on 6 May 2025, was a global shame and a scandalous exhibition of dysfunctional democracy. Vico’s leaders are allowing young voters with their parents to cheat instead of respecting the sacredness of the right to choose leaders without gifts or favors.

Pictures abound of students and their parents receiving money from city hall operatives. Is that not an ugly display of indecency in our kind of democracy?

Both Senate President Tito Sotto and Senator Ping Lacson have their costly iconic P33-billion Senate building.

Vico could lose his post for corruption and vote-buying; the Senate could sink with the over-loaded cost of its building.

Corruption is not without a price. Each day that we fail to act on it, we are incurring a social and economic cost that affects the future of this country.

That is why President Bongbong Marcos is angry. Wishful thinkers are hoping that he declares a shift from the presidential unitary with bicameral system, under the 1987 Constitution, to the modified parliamentary system with a National Assembly under the 1973 Constitution.

13 January 2025 was the day of infamy, when Vico signed the contract with a foreign firm to construct the new Pasig City Hall at the price of P9.6 billion. Engineer Selwyn Lao and a hundred of his fellow engineers also said it is highly overpriced.

The construction of the new Senate building was the brainchild of Senator Panfilo Lacson.

Upon the motion of Senator Tito Sotto, the body considered Senate Resolution 293, which tasked it with conducting a feasibility study on the construction of a new Senate building and the relocation of the Senate thereto.

On 21 November 2017, in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Senator Lacson said: “The Senate has been renting the use of its building from the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) and the use of the parking lot from the Social Security System (SSS) since 1996.

“The total amount of office rental fees paid has reached P2.24 billion, enough to construct an iconic, permanent Senate building,” Lacson said.

Construction of the New Senate Building in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig City, formally started on 18 March 2019 with a ground-breaking ceremony led by Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto III.

The 40-month construction was set to be completed in 2022, with the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) overseeing the implementation of the project.

When Chiz Escudero assumed the Senate presidency, he revealed that he was surprised to learn about the P23 billion allocation for the Senate building, which he noted was bid out for only P8.9 billion. Then it ballooned to P13 billion, and an additional P10 billion was allocated for its completion.

Escudero said the new Senate building may not be ready even in 2026.

According to Senator Cayetano, the New Senate building now costs a whopping P33 billion!