Disclosure of blue ribbon partial report on flood control sought

By Benjamin Pulta, Philippine News Agency

(Supreme Court PH/facebook)

MANILA – A group of petitioners has asked the Supreme Court (SC) to compel the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to release its partial draft report on the anomalous flood control projects investigation.

The petitioners — lawyers Eldridge Aceron, Sikini Labastilla and Purificacion Bartolome-Bernabe — have filed a petition for mandamus and certiorari before the High Court, challenging the Blue Ribbon’s denial of their request to release the partial committee report.

The Senate panel, in its Feb. 23 decision to turn down the request, invoked the deliberative process privilege to prevent the “chilling effect” on frank deliberation within government bodies.

The petitioners, however, claimed that Blue Ribbon chairman Panfilo Lacson publicly disclosed the report’s contents over three weeks, with the senator confirming that the draft report recommended plunder and other charges against senators based on evidence gathered in the hearings.

“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 cited that the 1987 Constitution guarantees 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 SC to issue a writ of mandamus compelling the blue ribbon committee to release the full, complete and unredacted draft partial committee report as it existed on or about Feb. 3–4, 2026.