Repurposing infra

This 2025 should be remembered for one thing – the way President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos Jr. repurposed infrastructure, public and private.

First, the President exposed the biggest infrastructure corruption scandal in history – the P1.7 trillion wasted on flood control in the past 10 years, including the P1-trillion flood control money waylaid in the first three years of his administration. This scandal is called “flood-gate” – from the words “flood control” and “Watergate,” the biggest corruption scandal to erupt during the Richard Nixon presidency. Nixon was forced to resign, after claiming “I am not a crook.”

Second, he set up a machinery to go after the flood-gate crooks. He formed the Independent Commission for Infrastructure – an honest-to-goodness three-person investigative body. ICI has no subpoena nor seizure powers but it can call on the services of the investigative and police arms of the national government, the Department of Justice and its investigative arm, the National Bureau of Investigation, and the Philippine National Police and its investigative and intel arm, the CIDG.

Third, BBM appointed a no non-sense ombudsman, UP-trained lawyer Jesus Crispin “Boying” Remulla, 64. Boying is expected to retire past age 70. He wants that his lasting legacy as a public servant is that he went after the biggest crooks in government – charged them, had them arrested and jailed them, preferably for life. Remulla lowered the threshold for a crook to be convicted of plunder – P8.8 million, instead of P50 million under the Anti-Plunder Law.

Fourth, BBM put a non-engineer but an economist-technocrat as secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) – the most corrupt and notorious Cabinet department. Up to – if not more – than half of its trillion-peso annual budget is stolen pala.

Vince Dizon, 51, finished high school at Don Bosco Technical College, economics and commerce degrees at La Salle Manila and masters in applied development studies at the University of Reading as a British Chevening Scholar. Though not an engineer, he knows how to crunch numbers, apply those to the economics of an emerging country like the Philippines against the backdrop of having worked with among the most powerful and influential politicians of the land – including the killer president, Digong Duterte, and the nice-guy president, BBM.

Can any engineer of Imee Marcos’ liking match that? No, of course not.

Combing their work – ICI, Vince Dizon, Ombudsman Remulla – you have at least 87 individuals facing arrest or been arrested, charged in court and/or imprisoned. The 87 include among the most powerful politicians of the land and the most notorious contractor of them all – Sarah Discaya, whose family wangled P200 billion worth of DPWH contracts in the past 10 years. She now wears among the most iconic of uniforms – a bright yellow prison garb. Hers is the most elite yellow army in the world, behind bars.

Finally, BBM has educated Filipinos how, from now on, they should look at infra. It must be lower cost. He brought down construction material prices by 30 to 50 percent when the items are purchased by the DPWH. Infra must be focused, built with top quality, serve the purpose it was designed for.

And the best infra of all – quality infra that is free, provided by the private sector.

In this connection, let me quote my Inquirer colleague, Jake Maderazo:

“What sets President Marcos Jr. apart is the combination of vision and discipline. He has not merely criticized the past – he has mobilized institutions like the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA) to deliver tangible, transformational projects of international and world class standard, structured to avoid placing new liabilities on the public purse. Under his leadership, reclamation is being reframed from a fiscal risk into a strategic asset: a generator of jobs for poverty alleviation, housing, commerce and long-term revenue, not a vehicle for short-term profiteering.

“The Pasay City reclamation project along Manila Bay, which government owns 51 percent, is the clearest demonstration of his seriousness. Spanning 365 hectares, the project has been positioned to unlock trillions of pesos in economic value while delivering an unprecedented package of infrastructure without direct taxpayer expense: 88 kilometers of new roads, 102 new drainage systems and 15 new bridges. I repeat, these are all free of charge infrastructure but meticulously engineered to be resilient, durable, environmentally conscious and flood mitigating, all fulfilling world class standards. These are not token promises. They have become a new baseline for how major urban projects should be conceived and executed in the Philippines.

“Clearly, in reclamation, President Marcos Jr. has shown that fiscal prudence and ambition are not mutually exclusive. By insisting on project structures that require no direct government expenditure, he protects the public interest and shifts the model of development away from the old, corrupt playbook. This leader refuses to let infrastructure become a conduit for pocket-lining. Instead, he insists that infrastructure must pay forward – creating value for citizens and the nation.

“The Marcos Jr. approach is technical as much as it is moral. The reclamation initiatives under PRA highlights engineering excellence and environmental safeguards. Roads are being designed for long-term durability; bridges are conceived to withstand extreme weather; drainage systems are planned to mitigate the perennial flooding that has crippled neighborhoods for generations.

“This is infrastructure designed to perform, not to fail. That emphasis on resilience is not optional; it is essential in a nation that faces the mounting realities of climate change. President Marcos directed chairman Alexander T. Lopez and the PRA with executing this vision – and they have been made accountable to it.

“President Marcos Jr. is delivering more than infrastructure plans – he is delivering a new mandate for governance: build value, not waste; protect taxpayers and prioritize resilience. The reclamation work in Pasay City and the PRA’s institutional realignment are concrete proofs of that mandate. If these projects are executed – resilient, technically sound and without direct taxpayer expense – they will not only reshape Metro Manila’s physical footprint but will restore a crucial element of public life: trust.”

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