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Unable to obtain all the required signatures, Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson delivered yesterday before the plenary the Blue Ribbon committee’s so-called chairman’s progress report on the flood control and budget mess.
Lacson, who chairs the committee, effectively broke the deadlock on the issue, allowing the Office of the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice to use in their own probes the Blue Ribbon’s findings on the corruption scandal.
Two more signatures are needed for the report to be presented to the plenary for debates, amendments and other actions. As of yesterday, those who had signed the report were Senate President Vicente Sotto III as well as Senators Bam Aquino, Risa Hontiveros, Francis Pangilinan and the brothers Erwin and Raffy Tulfo.
Other senators refused to sign the report, which recommends the preliminary investigation by the ombudsman of Senators Francis Escudero, Jinggoy Estrada and Joel Villanueva; former House speaker Martin Romualdez and resigned Ako Bicol party-list congressman Zaldy Co as well as over a dozen other government officials.
Lacson has softened the wording of the report in relation to the senators, and denied the minority’s observation that the findings treated Romualdez with kid gloves. But this failed to persuade more senators to sign the report.
After the progress report was read out during the plenary yesterday, the findings, based on testimonies and material evidence presented during the Blue Ribbon hearings, can now be used by the Office of the Ombudsman in its own probe.
Lacson has announced that the next Blue Ribbon hearings would focus on establishing a paper trail linking lawmakers to anomalous flood control and other infrastructure projects. He said he would invite Romualdez to the Blue Ribbon probe, and Zaldy Co if the latter would be brought back to the Philippines.
A long-time advocate of clean budgeting, Lacson intends to conduct a deeper probe into the so-called “allocables” and “leadership funds” in the process of crafting the national budget.
Whether or not the committee report gets the required number of signatures from senators, the nation awaits the complete results of the Blue Ribbon probe.
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Credit belongs to: www.philstar.com
