House of thieves

SEN. PANFILO “Ping” Lacson called for a “no-holds-barred” audit of the Senate’s finances to save the chamber’s image amid the controversy on the conversion of millions of pesos of excess funds into cash “gifts” and “bonuses” just before Christmas.

Eddie O. Barrita

Small bites

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Earlier, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile said his critics are trying to place the Senate “under a dark cloud of doubt and suspicion as a house of thieves.”

Senator Lacson probably needs some kind of confirmation.

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Senator Lacson said the Senate is the loser in the heated word war between Enrile and Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano on allegations of impropriety and even on some personal matters.

“The Senate is the loser. Nobody is the winner. Hopefully somebody will win when the logical conclusion is reached and that should be the Filipino people,” Lacson said.

One generation built the Senate as an institution, another generation tears it down.

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The spotlight in the Senate gives House members a respite.

This brings to mind a joke shared by former Cebu City south district Rep. Tony Cuenco about a congressman who was roused from deep slumber by his wife who heard noise in the kitchen in the middle of the night.

“Honey, there’s a thief in the house,” the wife told him in a hushed voice.

The congressman, still half awake, whispered to the wife, “Honey, there’s no thief in the House, in the Senate maybe.”

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President Noynoy Aquino’s speech on the country's experience to weed out corruption received a "very good" reception and served as inspiration from global leaders and top chief executive officers as well as chief financial officers attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

No, he certainly didn’t talk about the Christmas gifts in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Otherwise, the delegates would have asked him how did they do it.