Senate President Pro Tempore Ping Lacson slammed unnamed critics on Tuesday who are allegedly framing Senator Loren Legarda as responsible for the alleged coup plot against Senate President Tito Sotto.

Lacson claimed that Legarda was lured to snatch the presidency from Sotto amid speculation of “dissatisfaction” with his leadership. However, when the efforts failed, he said the narrative was twisted to make it appear that Legarda volunteered to help them gather support to oust Sotto.

“After dangling the Senate presidency to her, they are now floating the falsehood that it was Senator Loren who volunteered to recruit warm bodies to pave the way for a new Senate majority. It is not only malicious. It is sadistic,” he wrote on X.

Legarda forms part of the majority bloc under Sotto. In September, she voted to oust then Senate President Chiz Escudero in favor of Sotto, who had just returned from a May 2025 election comeback.

Sotto, on Monday, downplayed murmurs of a coup, saying his colleagues in the majority gave him assurance of their continued support.

The Senate leader also expressed confidence that a loyalty check is “unnecessary.”

Nonetheless, he added that if it were to happen, it could be due to his “strictness” in budget management, particularly “insertions,” and that another possible factor could be the sudden change in the leadership of the foreign relations committee, which was recently taken from opposition Senator Imee Marcos and handed to Senator Erwin Tulfo.

Senate Minority Leader Alan Cayetano explicitly said that “it was never a secret” that the opposition wanted to reclaim the majority from the current leadership, though he added that they still don’t have the 13 votes to do so.

The minority would need 13 votes to remove Sotto as Senate chief. At present, there are nine members in the opposition bloc.

However, their numbers could drop by one due to the continued absence of Senator Bato dela Rosa, who has been absent since November due to an alleged warrant from the International Criminal Court.

Lacson, a known close ally of Sotto, blasted threats of a looming coup as a “continuing crime,” with other majority senators questioning its feasibility.