Sen. Panfilo "Ping" Lacson on Saturday, June 13, lauded Sen. Erwin Tulfo for standing firm against peer pressure to tolerate wrongdoing when he upheld his duty to help disclose the truth behind the anomalies in defective and ghost flood control projects.

Lacson cited Tulfo's confirmation in a podcast interview that he signed the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee's partial report on the flood control scandal despite pressure from some fellow senators.

"Thank you Sen. Erwin for speaking the truth to confirm what I had thought all along was the real reason - bakit inamag at tuluyan nang napanis ang BRC partial report. Quo vadis, Philippine Senate (Thank you Sen. Erwin for speaking the truth to confirm what I had thought all along was the real reason - why the partial report was left to go stale and become spoiled. Where do you go from here, Philippine Senate)?" Lacson, who chaired the panel when it came out with the partial report, said in a post on X.

Tulfo, who was elected Blue Ribbon Committee chairman after a leadership change last June 3, said in an interview with broadcast journalist Jessica Soho that some of his colleagues got angry with him for signing the report. Tulfo was the panel's vice chairman at the time.

He recalled that some of his colleagues tried to discourage him from signing the partial report because "kasama natin kawawa (some of our colleagues would be put on the spot)."

But he replied, "hindi ko naman pwedeng ipikit-pikit (I cannot just close my eyes)" and signed the report, even if he intended to raise questions about the report's contents in plenary.

Lacson earlier pointed out that had the report secured at least nine signatures, he would sponsor it on the floor where it could be debated, amended, and eventually adopted.

"Sabi ko, nakakahiya sa tao (I said it would be a shame to erstwhile Blue Ribbon Chairman Sen. Lacson)," Tulfo said, adding that his brother, Sen. Raffy Tulfo, along with Lacson and four other senators, also signed the report.

While the seven signatures still fell short of the nine needed for Lacson to sponsor the partial report in plenary, the contents of the partial report became part of the Senate's official records after Lacson presented his Chairman's Progress Report in a privilege speech last May 5.

In his privilege speech, Lacson presented key evidence and policy recommendations drawn from the panel's hearings to end the "systematic and parasitic greed" behind anomalous flood control projects.

Also, Lacson submitted all the pieces of evidence gathered in the course of the eight hearings to the Office of the Ombudsman to help them in their ongoing preliminary investigation of some personalities linked to the flood control mess, now that the evidence is part of the official Senate records.