THE Senate should be ashamed of the cost of its new luxurious offices in posh Bonifacio Global City. It would be scandalous if it did not investigate this disgrace to the nation.

When the project was first announced in 2018, then-senator Panfilo Lacson, who was in charge of it, said the planned Senate building would cost taxpayers only P4.8 billion. I immediately wrote a column — the first of six such pieces from 2018 to 2022 on what I called a monument to the Senate's profligacy — reporting that my sources in the construction business laughed at his estimate and that it would at least cost P10 billion. Lacson issued a press statement that said: ''I based [my] figure P4.8 billion project cost as submitted by AECOM [the US firm that won the bidding for the project] on facts; Mr. Tiglao based his on opinion. '