Public works secretary Vince Dizon made much fanfare last week of his inspection of substandard infrastructure projects in Eastern Visayas, where he zeroed in only on the Maharlika Highway and the Calbayog Bypass Coastal Road while conspicuously ignoring many other eyesore projects in the region especially those in Leyte.

He and his yes-men could not spare a few more hours to travel to Tacloban City where residents continue to suffer perennial floods and landslides despite the ₱14.1 billion worth of flood control funds in the province from July 2022 to May 2025. At least ₱2.4 billion went to Tacloban alone, comprising 12% of the total flood control funds in Eastern Visayas and is the highest among all the cities and municipalities in the region.

He did not bother publicly castigating other anomalous and far larger projects, such as the environmentally-destructive ₱4.48 billion Tacloban causeway, pet project of the Romualdezes and former accomplice Zaldy Co; or the ₱9 billion tide embankment project which remains incomplete after almost 10 years of construction or more than 12 years since supertyphoon Yolanda.

Dizon will not do that because Leyte and Tacloban City are baliwicks of his boss Ferdinand Marcos Jr, indisputable king of corruption, and Marcos’ cousin Martin Romualdez. Putting their anomalous projects into the limelight runs contrary to Dizon’s assignment which is to veer attention away from Malacañang and to cover up its head role in the plunder of the public coffers.

He could not do that in the same week impeachment complaints against Marcos dominated headlines due to his abuse of ₱2.1 trillion worth of unprogrammed allocations, institutionalization of “allocables” through the Baselined-Balanced-Managed (BBM) parametric formula, and personally partaking in at least ₱ billion worth of kickbacks from infrastructure projects. Dizon infamously feigned ignorance of the BBM formula, and refused to subject it to further scrutiny.

Dizon is an ambitious, opportunistic and PR-focused bureaucrat working overtime to campaign for higher office in the 2028 elections. Just as when he viciously defended the corrupt tyrant Rodrigo Duterte as president of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority in 2016-2021, Dizon will be henchman to whomever is in power so that he himself can rise in the ranks of the reactionary government.

The people of Eastern outrightly reject him and are calling out his and the Marcos regime’s selective and performative outrage over the entire corruption scandal. They are merely glossing over their boss’s culpability. Day by day any semblance of democracy or accountability for corrupt officials under the Marcos regime are eroding.