Construction firm owner Curlee Discaya and former DPWH engineers Jaypee Mendoza and Brice Hernandez attend a congressional hearing on flood control projects at the House of Representatives in Quezon City on Tuesday, September 9, 2025. Maria Tan, ABS-CBN News
MANILA — There will be no holiday furlough for Senate detainees in connection with the flood control scandal, Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson said on Tuesday.
Lacson, who also chairs the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee investigating the scandal, said Senate President Vicente Sotto III approved his recommendation to deny the leave requests of contractor Curlee Discaya and former DPWH engineers Brice Hernandez, Jaypee Mendoza, and Henry Alcantara.
Senate detainees might spend holidays in custody
"I recommended to the Senate President that their request for Christmas furlough be denied mainly for security reasons, owing to the repeated media statements from Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla and President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. that arrest warrants against them will be issued before Christmas," Lacson said.
"So the risk of escape becomes greater - not to mention that it makes no sense to grant such requests for Christmas leave if indeed warrants are coming out by then," Lacson added, saying he will only allow the four to hear Mass in the Senate.
Lacson said their families may visit them but nothing outside the Senate premises.
"That’s the most that we can allow given the circumstances," Lacson said of Sotto's decision.
The panel held Discaya and the former DPWH engineers in contempt for refusing to cooperate in its flood control project investigation. Alcantara sought a holiday leave through the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Lacson expressed hopes that the Office of the Ombudsman can deliver on its publicly stated timelines to sue those found responsible before the Sandiganbayan and other venues, if only to send a clear message against impunity.
INSERTIONS
Meanwhile Lacson clarified that senators who were elected last May are not among those who had budget insertions in the 2025 budget of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) as claimed by Batangas Rep. Leandro Leviste.
Lacson said the records Leviste cited, which supposedly showed senators’ insertions in the DPWH’s 2025 budget amounting to P120 billion, refer to a budget that was approved by the 19th Congress, months before the May midterm elections.
“Congressman Leviste should at least qualify his statement with the phrase ‘in the 19th Congress’ in fairness to the new members of the 20th Congress, including myself and Senate President Vicente Sotto III, among others,” he said.
“That said, even during the previous Congresses, I never partook of allocables or pork barrel allocations, or whatever names they were called,” he added.
In a radio interview Monday, Leviste was quoted as saying that senators made P120 billion in insertions to the 2025 budget, based on documents he got from the late DPWH Undersecretary Ma. Catalina Cabral.
Leviste even said his mother, Sen. Loren Legarda, was listed as having project insertions although he quoted her as saying she had no knowledge of the projects listed under her name.
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