Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson continued to make cryptic posts on X, this time about a ‘crazy cat’ meowing on the ground floor and ‘an annoying dog that keeps barking on the upper floor.’
‘Help! Is there a veterinary clinic with an animal psychiatric ward?’ read his X post on Thursday.
‘We have a crazy cat that keeps meowing on the ground floor and an annoying dog that keeps barking on the upper floor,’ Lacson added.
Incidentally, the senator’s remark came just a day after Sen. Rodante Marcoleta’s privilege speech on the Senate floor about Lacson’s earlier disclosure that almost all senators in the 19th Congress inserted at least P100 billion in the 2025 national budget.
Lacson has already explained to his colleagues in a caucus that his mention of ‘almost all senators’ in his media interviews was not meant to put them or the whole Senate on the spot.
‘The overarching reason for my disclosure or revelation was to point out that we must accept the fact that we are all in crisis owing to the recent anomalies involving the substandard and even ghost flood control projects unearthed in the course of the Blue Ribbon Committee hearings and other similar investigations,’ he said then.
Senate President Vicente ‘Tito’ Sotto III has also clarified that individual or institutional amendments or insertions made during Senate deliberations are part of the regular budget process.
But Marcoleta, in the privilege speech on Monday, noted how Sotto seemed to draw a ‘moral line that insertions were wrong’ when he refused an alleged insertion offer to him in the 2026 budget by the Department of Public Works and Highways Usec. Maria Catalina Cabral.
‘Does this mean that the Senate President never had budget insertions during all the time he served as senator of the Republic and as Senate President for almost five years?’ Marcoleta asked.
Before answering the question, Sotto said he wished Marcoleta had delivered his speech when Lacson was still in the session hall.
‘But nevertheless, to answer his question of whether from my 1992 to the present, have I not had any insertions, I guarantee you I have never made any insertion in the budget. Because insertions are not tolerated and I will never do that.’ the Senate chief said.
Sotto explained that insertions are those that were made during the bicameral conference committee, and not those that were made on second reading on the Senate floor.
‘An insertion is different from an amendment. [An] amendment is legally done during second reading and approved on third reading,’ he pointed out, speaking partly in Filipino.
To ensure transparency in the current and next budget proposals, all amendments of senators would have to be made on the Senate floor.
‘They will own what they amend whatever it is and we will not accept any amendment in the bicameral conference committee,’ Sotto said.