Lacson: Congressman gets P15B ‘pork’, some senators receive P5B–P10B
Panfilo “Ping” Lacson during a forum at the Inquirer office in Makati. INQUIRER file photo
MANILA, Philippines — Sen. Panfilo “Ping” Lacson has exposed the alleged multibillion-peso “pork barrel” allocations of some lawmakers, with one congressman receiving as much as P15 billion.
He noted that before the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), also known as the “pork barrel,” was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, senators had only P200 million in pork while members of the House of Representatives had P70 million.
“Well, after it was declared unconstitutional, there are now senators with P5 billion, some even with P10 billion. And there’s a congressman with as much as P15 billion,” Lacson said in an interview on One News late Wednesday.
It has been 12 years since the Supreme Court declared the PDAF unconstitutional in 2013.
READ: SC declares PDAF unconstitutional
Before ending his last term in the Senate in 2022, Lacson said he and then-Senator Franklin Drilon succeeded in removing the budgets for dredging and flood control projects, which he described as the root causes of corruption.
“We succeeded in removing them in the bicam before we termed out in 2022. Now they’re back with a vengeance,” Lacson lamented.
In the same interview, the senator disclosed his initial findings from his scrutiny of the 2025 national budget.
He said one item in the budget showed that “a very small barangay in a small town” received a P1.9 billion allocation, while another small town was allotted a P10 billion budget.
“Imagine a P10-billion appropriation for a small town with 10,000 residents. It is an inequitable distribution of the budget,” Lacson said.
“I will seek clarification on this. What happened to the P10 billion appropriated to the small town? We saw that it is near a riverbank, but is it the only town with a riverbank? These appropriations are for flood control,” he added.
Lacson, who plans to start the 20th Congress “up and running,” is scrutinizing the items in the budgets for 2023, 2024, and 2025./mcm/abc
