SOMEBODY should issue a cease-and-desist order to stop some senators from brokering a truce between warring senators Panfilo Lacson and Alan Peter Cayetano. The war of words, the claims and counter-claims, the accusations and the corresponding rebuttals are norms in a democracy, in a government with the mandate to guarantee transparency and accountability on public expenditures. For the sake of our democratic norms, the word war should rage until the legal systems and judicial processes shall have provided the closure to the competing claims.
Lacson has made several serious accusations against Cayetano, whose claimed public persona is that of a bible-quoting, never-erring paragon of rectitude and piety. It’s about time we put Cayetano’s self-proclaimed fealty to rectitude and piety to the test. The time is not for a truce but truth-seeking. A truce will literally sweep under the rug the all too serious charges that Lacson has so far leveled against Cayetano, which are now at the stage of dragging down Cayetano’s sister and Senate colleague, Pia Cayetano.
Truth-seeking should not be sacrificed in the name of fake collegiality. A brokered truce will usher in a temporary ceasefire in verbal hostilities which may not even hold for long. The public needs answers to the simple question of “who is telling the truth?” Or, we can frame the question this way: Who, between Lacson and Cayetano, is lying?
Lacson claims to have discovered 32 “ghost projects” allegedly all linked to Cayetano. The 32 contracts, according to the contract awards, were for “slope protection and mitigation” projects in Taguig City that fall under the broad category of flood control projects. But instead of the standard “slope protection and mitigation,” the 32 contracts, according to Lacson, carried out land reclamation work at the Laguna Lake. A total of 84 hectares had been reclaimed under the cover of “slope protection and mitigation,” according to Lacson.
The possibility that the reclaimed lands would be titled to private individuals was the reason Lacson has asked the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA) to just seize the reclaimed lands. The reclamation was illegal, carried out under the cover of “slope protection and mitigation,” and never sought reclamation permits from government.
What was the funding source for the massive land reclamation allegedly done under the cover of “slope protection and mitigation?” Lacson claims there was a P6.79 billion budget insertion in the 2025 national budget for projects in exactly the same area, with Cayetano as the main proponent of the insertion. For that same year, Cayetano’s sister Pia allegedly had a budgetary insertion totaling P4.7 billion but Lacson is still finding out if that fund insertion also helped fund the land reclamation done under the cover of “slope protection and mitigation.”
News reports quoted Lacson as saying the sheet piles were driven into the open water for the land reclamation. “There were no slopes to protect because the projects were not really meant for slope protection work but for land reclamation,” he claimed.
How did the contractors bill the Department of Public Works and Highways for the land reclamation which they carried out under the guise of “slope protection and mitigation?” By presenting photos of “slope protection and mitigation,” done elsewhere but attributed as part and parcel of the Cayetano-funded projects. In many cases, added Lacson, photos of completed slope protection and mitigation work done in places other than the Laguna Lake project of Cayetano were “brazenly recycled” in the billing papers that the contractor of the 32 projects presented to the DPWH for collection purposes. Lacson claims that some of the contractors that undertook the 32 land reclamation projects masquerading as “slope protection and mitigation,” have agreed to testify on the alleged anomalous nature of the land reclamation work undertaken.
Some but not all of the 32 contractors have agreed to cooperate with the Lacson fact-finding operation. And among those who refused to cooperate were the construction companies owned by the couple often tagged as the public face of the mind-boggling flood control corruption that took place from 2022 to mid-2025: Sara and Pacifico “Curlee” Discaya. Before the Lacson allegations against Cayetano, there was nothing in the news archives about St. Gerard and St. Timothy Construction working on Cayetano-funded projects.
Cayetano said that Lacson’s accusations were “sweeping and “lacking in specifics.”
Last year, Cayetano claimed, the Office of the Ombudsman said that it found no ghost projects in Taguig City. Cayetano added that his own Senate office had conducted a review of publicly funded projects in Taguig and found the same conclusion: no ghost projects. The people of Taguig can also attest to the integrity of publicly funded infrastructure in the city.
Cayetano wondered why Lacson “is singling out” Taguig when he could have made an inquiry into the status of publicly funded projects in other major cities of Metro Manila.
He called Lacson’s accusations “malicious.” Then added, he will answer those “malicious” charges before the proper forum, clearly referring to the justice system.
Good. That proper forum is obviously the judicial system which in a democracy of co-equal branches of government, can rule on the guilt or innocence of Alan Peter Cayetano.
