A FEW months ago, the Senate bragged that it had moved beyond just talking about transparency. As discussions of the 2026 national budget got underway, senators framed the livestreaming of committee hearings, plenary debates, and bicameral conference committee deliberations as the “new normal” that set a new standard for transparency in government.
Sadly, these same senators seem to be merely paying lip service to openness when it involves allegations of wrongdoing by some of their own.
Last week, a group of petitioners asked the Supreme Court to compel the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to release its partial draft report on its investigation into anomalous flood control projects.
The petitioners — lawyers Eldridge Aceron, Sikini Labastilla and Purificacion Bartolome-Bernabe — filed before the high court a petition for mandamus and certiorari challenging the Senate panel’s denial of their request to release that draft report.
In its Feb. 23 decision to turn down the request, the committee invoked “deliberative process privilege,” arguing that releasing an unfinished draft would hinder “frank deliberations” and create a chilling effect on internal government discussions.
The petitioners, however, said this privilege was waived when Sen. Panfilo Lacson, the panel’s chairman, disclosed the report’s contents over three weeks, and confirmed that the draft report recommended plunder, bribery and malversation charges against Senators Joel Villanueva, Jinggoy Estrada and Chiz Escudero; detained former senator Bong Revilla; resigned lawmaker Zaldy Co; and former Caloocan representative Mitch Cajayon-Uy.
“Chairman Lacson is the institutional holder of the deliberative process privilege he now invokes against petitioners. He is not a rogue subordinate acting without authority. He is the chairman — the very person empowered to decide what the committee discloses and what it withholds. When the privilege-holder chooses to publicly disclose the substance of the privileged material, the privilege is surrendered, not stolen,” the petition said.
The petitioners also said the 1987 Constitution guaranteed the people’s right to information on matters of public concern.
“The right to information is not a gift from the state to the citizen. It is a guarantee the citizen holds against the state. It is time this Honorable Court enforced it,” they added.
They also asked the Supreme Court to issue a writ of mandamus compelling the committee to release the full, complete and unredacted draft partial committee report as it existed on or about Feb. 3 and 4, 2026.
The arguments are convincing, and the Senate’s suggestion that releasing the draft report would somehow have a “chilling effect” on the robustness of their deliberations seems ludicrous, at best.
In early February, a draft of the committee report had already been leaked to the media. Senate President Vicente Sotto III and other leaders immediately played this down, saying it was “unofficial” and “premature.”
Under Senate rules, a committee report requires the signatures of a majority of the committee members (at least 11) to be officially tabled for plenary discussion. While some senators signed the draft, three of them — Juan Miguel Zubiri, JV Ejercito and Sherwin Gatchalian — withdrew their signatures from the draft, saying they needed more time to review the 500-page document, particularly the specific evidence backing the criminal recommendations against their colleagues. Following these withdrawals, Lacson admitted that the number of active signatures dropped significantly, from six to three, effectively stalling the report.
The Senate opened its investigation into the flood control scandal on Aug. 19, 2025, prompted by a series of disclosures regarding the disproportionate concentration of multibillion-peso contracts among a small group of favored contractors, as well as the discovery of “ghost projects” following severe flooding across the country.
The motu proprio inquiry, titled “Philippines Under Water,” had these objectives: identify irregularities; uncover corruption networks; address budget misallocation; evaluate the government’s flood control master plan; and lead to legislative reform.
To achieve these objectives, the investigation — and the resulting report — must be credible. But how credible can it be, when it remains shrouded in secrecy?
The Senate maintains that the refusal to release the report is purely procedural, ensuring the document is “clean” and vetted — and signed — before it becomes an official state record. To critics and the general public, however, the delay might well be seen as attempt to “sanitize” the report or protect colleagues.
Such suspicions were bolstered on Feb. 10, when Lacson confirmed that the committee was “polishing” the report to change recommendations from “filing of plunder charges” to “preliminary investigation.”
With all due respect to the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee chairman, such a drastic change can hardly be called “polishing.” “Whitewashing” might be the more accurate term.
