Talk’s cheap
Lacson particularly referred to the 2019 SEA Games hosting mess where tens of billions of pesos of public money passed through a private foundation that Cayetano led.
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Lacson particularly referred to the 2019 SEA Games hosting mess where tens of billions of pesos of public money passed through a private foundation that Cayetano led.
We’ve heard the promise before. Now, amid the growing public demand for accountability from the country’s highest officials, Senator Ping Lacson has an opportunity to make good on his vow to uncover the alleged irregularities involving fellow Senator Alan Peter Cayetano.
Lacson likened Cayetano’s style to that of a squid. Instead of directly answering difficult questions, Cayetano releases an ink cloud — dropping names, pointing fingers and invoking conspiracies and enemies. While everyone is distracted by the spectacle, attention shifts away from the questions that remain unanswered.
Lacson particularly referred to the 2019 Southeast Asian Games hosting mess where tens of billions of pesos of public money passed through a private foundation that Cayetano led.
Questions on where the money went were met not with answers but with noise.
Consistent with his character, Cayetano diverted the discussion when Lacson also accused him of securing P6.79 billion in insertions in the 2025 national budget and 25-percent kickbacks tied to slope protection and other flood control infrastructure.
Instead of a straight answer, Cayetano countered with suggestions that Lacson and Senator Erwin Tulfo were just following orders from Malacañang with regard to Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial.
Classic squid tactics, mixing an impeachment trial with questions on kickbacks and ghost projects, are meant to blur the story, make people shrug and move on.
Cayetano is betting that if he shoots off enough ink, no one will see the fish trying to swim away.
Lacson claims he has informants and witnesses, including Cayetano’s brother, Lino, who he said reached out through an intermediary and has volunteered to speak out.
Lacson, however, needs to prove the charges he leveled at Cayetano, or he might be accused of the same squid tactics since allegations were also leveled at him.If Lacson keeps firing off numbers in interviews and social media posts without ever walking them into a hearing room with documents on the table, he will start to look like a man doing exactly what he accuses Cayetano of doing: Talking loud, moving fast and hoping the noise itself becomes the argument.
The test is plain and simple. Lacson said he will hand over documents and witness names to Blue Ribbon chairperson Tulfo. Good.
Unless the evidence holds up in a hearing, not just in a press statement, every headline built on “alleged” is just ink in the water.
It should not end up as a partisan story about senators fighting senators. It is a simple story about public money and who should be answerable for it.
Every peso lost in the vortex of corruption came from taxpayers who fix their own roofs before they fix the road near their house, who send their kids to school in jeepneys, who do not get anything inserted into their budgets.
When that money in the national budget disappears into a maze of kickbacks or outright pocketing, it is not about a political feud — it is a theft from the people who trusted their government to spend fairly.
The skirmishes between two factions in the Senate may lead to the breakup of the once impregnable Old Boys Club.
Lacson, however, still needs to put his money where his mouth is.
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