Erwin Tulfo now serves as acting chairman of Senate Blue Ribbon panel—Sotto

Sen. Erwin Tulfo is now the acting chairman of the Senate Blue Ribbon panel, according to Senate President Vicente "Tito" Sotto III.

"In the meantime, Sen. Erwin Tulfo being the vice chairman automatically becomes the chairman right now. We all agreed that he's acting chairman so I told him and I made sure that he accepted it," Sotto told reporters in an ambush interview on Wednesday. Oct. 8.

The news comes after Sen. Ping Lacson stepped down from his post as some of his colleagues criticized the panel's investigation into anomalous flood control projects.

"In the course of the current investigation, which has implicated some senators in the flood control mess, a number of our colleagues have expressed disappointment with the 'direction' of the Blue Ribbon Committee, which this representation chairs," the Senate President Pro Tempore wrote in his resignation letter submitted to Sotto.

"Furthermore, some senators publicly and secretly pursue the narrative that I am zeroing in on several of my colleagues while purportedly protecting those members of the Lower House perceived to be the principal actors in the budget anomalies related to the substandard and ghost flood control projects."

Lacson called these narratives "categorically false" and "misrepresentations" by critics opposed to efforts to uncover the flood control anomalies.

The controversy involving the government's flood control projects began in July as the rains triggered massive flooding in the metro.

Hearings at the House of Representatives and the Senate revealed billions of pesos lost to corruption, which prompted the formation of the Independent Commission on Infrastructure that will specifically investigate irregularities in flood control projects in the last 10 years.