Persistence pays for Mayor Geld, Atlu-Bola Bypass Road constructed

 

MABALACAT CITY – Dogged determination defines Mayor Atty. Gerald Guttrie “Geld” P. Aquino, if only for his resolute pursuit of solutions to his city’s traffic problems, which – at least in one instance – has yielded spectacularly immediate – in the scheme of things infrastructural hereabouts – most favorable results.    

The case in point here is the Sta. Ines-Atlu Bola Bypass Road. Aquino’s singularity of purpose well documented in local news platforms and Punto! foto stories datelined Mabalacat City, chronologically, to wit:  

Aug. 26, 2025. NLEX, LGU IN TRAFFIC TALKS

Mayor Atty. Geld Aquino has engaged the assistance of the North Luzon Expressway Corp. to develop a comprehensive analysis of the city’s traffic situation as well as the harmonization of projects to ease traffic flow and mobility. Among those discussed in a meeting at the NLEX head office in Balintawak on Aug. 26 was the Sta. Ines-Atlu-Bola Bypass Road eyed to provide direct access to the NLEX Exit in Sta. Ines and ease traffic flow to and from the city proper.

Nov. 13, 2025. BYPASS ROAD TO NLEX

Mayor Atty. Geld Aquino and NLEX Corp. president Luis Reñon lead a site inspection for the proposed Mabalacat Bypass Road that will connect NLEX Sta. Ines Exit to the barangays of Mangalit and Atlu-Bola to alleviate heavy traffic flow to the city proper and its contiguous areas. Joining the inspection are NLEX Corp. AVP for business development Vic Apuzen, city engineer Rod de Leon, and city planning and development office chief Rosan Paquia. 

Prior to the inspection, the group met with Toll Regulatory Board executive director Atty. Jose Arturo Tugade in Clark Freeport to review project alignment, required documents, and project impact on the community.

In the past months, Mayor Aquino had consultative meetings on the bypass project with TRB, Department of Transportation, and the Metro Pacific Tollways Corp.

JAN. 23, 2026. BYPASS ROAD TO NLEX APPROVED

Department of Public Works and Highways Secretary Vince Dizon, on Jan. 23, HAS confirmed to Mayor Geld Aquino the approval of the Atlu-Bola Bypass Road which will provide an alternative route to the NLEX Sta. Ines Exit, the Mabalacat City Information Office said.

Jan. 29, 2026. PLANS FOR BYPASS ROAD FINALIZED

Technical details, implementation timelines, and inter-agency coordination were focus of the discussion towards the finalization of plans connecting the Atlu Bola Bypass Road to the NLEX Sta. Ines Exit among Mayor Geld Aquino, NLEX president Luis Reñon, NLEX AVP Vik Apuzen DPWH Assistant Secretary Suzanne Marie Ramos-Liwanag, and DPWH Region 3 director Arnold Ocampo along with their technical staff. Approved earlier by Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon, the project aims to ease traffic, improve expressway access, and boost Mabalacat City’s long-term economic growth.

Jan. 31, 2026. BYPASS ROAD TO NLEX GOOD TO GO

There is no other way but all-systems-go for the Mabalacat Bypass Road that will connect NLEX Sta. Ines Exit to the barangays of Mangalit and Atlu-Bola to alleviate heavy traffic flow to the city proper and its contiguous areas.

This, after the high-profile inspection of the site by Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon, NLEX Corp. president and general manager Luis Reñon, Pampanga 1^st District Rep. Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin Jr., and Mayor Atty. Geld Aquino.

Expressing bullishness over the prospect of bypass roads greatly contributing to the efforts of Mayor Aquino to make Mabalacat City the premier industrial-commercial hub of Central Luzon, Dizon said the DPWH is also looking into the funding of the Dolores Connector Road and bypass road to the Clark-Mabalacat-Angeles Road in Barangay San Joaquin connecting to the Pampanga Technopark being developed by AyalaLand in Barangay Tabun.

Feb. 13, 2026. ‘3-BALLS’ BYPASS ROAD UP FOR COMPLETION IN 2 MONTHS

Exactly 13 days after the Jan. 31 high-profile site-inspection by Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon, NLEX Corp. president and general manager Luis Reñon, Pampanga 1st District Rep. Carmelo “Pogi” Lazatin Jr., and Mayor Atty. Geld Aquino, materials testing and concrete pouring are already being undertaken by the DPWH on the construction of the Sta. Ines–Atlu Bola Bypass Road connecting NLEX Sta. Ines Exit to the barangays of Mangalit and Atlu-bola to alleviate heavy traffic flow to the city proper and its contiguous areas. The project has a timeline of two months for completion.

LESS THAN six months from consultation to construction – seeing completion in the next two months. No mean feat there for Mayor Geld Aquino. Not without, of course, the DPWH and NLEX Corp. finding common cause to bring it all about. In fine, a confluence of will, purpose, determination, action with Aquino as catalyst.

  

An affront to the heroism of San Fernando teachers

TEACHER’S HEROISM Day, January 30, has served in the past few years as an opening event in the annual celebration of Kaganapan cityhood charter celebration in the City of San Fernando.

 

Ding Bayaning Talaturu mural sculpture unveiled at the city schools division office in 2021 as tribute to the “teacher-heroes” of January 1980. Marker alongside it was installed in 2022. CSFP-CIO file photo

A most auspicious event to start the coming-to-fulfilment – that’s what “kaganapan” precisely means in Pilipino — of whatever promised greatness for this capital city and its people.

But for a select few in-the-know at city hall itself, who is even remotely aware of the meaning of that day? Of what heroic act the teachers accomplished and are now celebrated for. Or, who these teachers even were.

The significance of the event not only to the city but to the country itself prodded me to re-issue this piece published here some years back.

The “Rape of Democracy” it was called by the mosquito press – the intrepid underground publications and tabloids of the time – as it merited little if any play-up in the mainstream Marcosian media, especially in its flagship broadsheet Daily Express which was derisively punned and fittingly panned as the Daily Suppress.

So, the electorate was allowed to vote freely in the local elections of 1980. But the manual counting and canvassing of their votes was an altogether different matter.

Sensing imminent wholesale defeat for the administration’s Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) candidates – yes wholesale, as bloc voting was prescribed by the Commission on Elections itself – even at the onset of the counting, operatives of the party in-power let loose their armed goons upon the polling precincts, taking the ballot boxes and all election materials, and – when they resisted – the teachers themselves.

Fading memory now notwithstanding, it was in the small barangay of Malpitic that the news of the “snatching of ballots” and “kidnapping of teachers” first came out, and spread fast across town with reports of similar incidents occurring in practically all barangays of San Fernando.

Herded at the municipal hall and under pain of death, the teachers were forced to play the charade of vote-canvassing – first reading “KBL,” then tallying the vote in the designated KBL box of the canvass sheet, regardless of what was written on the ballot.

No mere urban legend were the stories of the teachers – in fits of nervousness and intense stress – peeing in their skirts and, perhaps on impulse of courageous defiance, reduced to stuttering “LBK,” “KLB,” and “BLK,” everything but the acronym they were forced to utter.

Truly, a stuff of legend though was the fearless stand of the teachers led by Madam Tess Tablante to publicly expose the ordeal they went through that forced the regime to nullify the election results – acknowledging that the teachers were “threatened and coerced into making spurious election returns without regard to the genuine ballots in the ballot boxes” – and unseated the Comelec-proclaimed winner, re-electionist Mayor Armando P. Biliwang.

In the interregnum ensued an unprecedented rule of succession with a Philippine Constabulary officer, Col. Amante S. Bueno, deputy commander for administration of the 3rd Regional PC Zone at Camp Olivas, taking over as OIC-Mayor, and succeeded by lawyer Vic Macalino, on the recommendation of the Honorable Estelito P. Mendoza, governor of Pampanga, secretary of justice, solicitor-general, among other titles.

The political impasse coming to an end with the special mayoralty election in 1983 won by Virgilio “Baby” Sanchez, who was Biliwang’s predecessor. That this: the teachers defending – with their very lives if needed – the sanctity of the vote at the height of the dictatorship when elections were a mockery of democracy, was damned heroic.

That in all of the Philippines where electoral terrorism was wanton practice, such heroism had to happen in San Fernando could only speak of redoubtable courage, a testimony to true grit of the local teachers.

January 30, 1980 in San Fernando is no mere footnote but a shining milestone in the history of the Filipino struggle for democracy, coming as it is full six years before the EDSA People Power Revolt that finally ousted the dictatorship.

More than just being opening event to the annual celebration of Kaganapan, Teachers’ Heroism Day needs to be memorialized – in stone, as in a monument to the courageous teachers, most fittingly at the Heroes Park; in book form, as in an oral history of the personal accounts of the teachers themselves.

In this era of fake news and forged histories, that task for the city government is as much incumbent as urgent. As much for the teachers, as for patrimony of the Fernandino.

So, what’s keeping the city from doing it?  

SO, WE WROTE here on Jan. 29, 2020. Now, fast forward to 2026.

 

NO, THE city government under Mayor Vilma Balle-Caluag did not wittingly disgrace the heroic teachers. It merely minimized their significance in this year’s Kaganapan 2026 that it so dubbed as “grandest and most historic cityhood anniversary celebration yet...”

Teachers Heroism Day – legislated by the then-Sangguniang Bayan ng San Fernando on Jan. 30, 1984 to be celebrated thereafter as “San Fernando Teachers Heroism Day” as fitting tribute to the 1980 heroic stand of the teachers – has not only ceased as kickoff event of Kaganapan: on the glorious silver anniversary rendition, it was all but totally expunged from the month-long calendar of events. Relegated as, indeed, a footnote to the “commemoration honoring the city’s journey, achievements, and collective aspirations” in the artcard #25FactsOn25th posted on the CSFP City Information Office FB page on Jan. 25, marked as 10 days to Kaganapan 2026.  

 

Where the city government was only remiss in properly observing both a Kaganapan tradition and the enacted legislation of San Fernando Teachers Heroism Day, Mayor Caluag’s online myrmidons banded under her campaign handle “Laban San Fernando” were outright in their denigration of the city’s public school teachers – of allegedly being herded to Pradera for what it alleged as “ginagawang hakbang ng kabilang grupo na naglalayong guluhin ang resulta at demokrasya ng nakaraang eleksyon” with “libreng tour, snacks, at pagkain” – implying some kind of bribery in a thinly-veiled, if overtly irrelevant, reference to the Comelec-ordered recount of the 2025 city mayoralty election results. Irrelevant, as the teachers will not have any direct hand in the recount.  

 

Still, the Laban San Fernando post even carried the caveat: “… paalala at panawagan din sa ating mga guro: anuman ang ialok o ibigay, panatilihin nating sagrado ang eleksyon at ang boto ng mamamayan.” Which, in the context of the overlooked Teachers Heroism Day celebration, comes as a flagrant affront to the city’s teachers. 

 

Indeed, swift and stinging was Pampanga chapter of Assert, the official union of teachers and school principals in Central Luzon, in its rebuke of Laban San Fernando’s canard: “We strongly condemn the continued spread of false information and malicious accusations against the teachers of the City of San Fernando, Pampanga.” (translated from Pilipino). 

In its social media post, Assert clarified that teachers have no role in any vote recount process and stressed that claims of payments or personal benefit connected to any alleged recount-related assembly are entirely false.

“Such statements are a blatant form of disinformation and an affront to an honorable profession,” the group said.

Furthering: “Teachers are professionals who have long served with dignity, integrity, and dedication to the education of our youth.”

That, the San Fernando teacher is. And more, much more given Jan. 30, 1980: That, in all of the Philippines where electoral terrorism was wanton practice, such defiant stand against it had to happen in San Fernando could only speak of redoubtable courage, a testimony to true grit manifest of the heroic character of the local teachers.

The vain attempt of Laban San Fernando to disparage that heroism – if only to show its fawning loyalty to Vilma Caluag – only exposed the utter shamelessness of the mayor’s online kindred.

Or is there some fear, of a sense of déjà vu in their Caluag-collected subconscious, of the aftermath of terrorized cheating in the 1980 city polls – the ultimate defeat of the incumbent mayor in 1983 – happening again post-Comelec recount in 2026?

That’s a hell of a stretch, wider than the 43 years spanning the not-so-dissimilar events. Alas, beloved guru Riza Shanti Lim is too far in the great beyond to make a divination of this.

More recent, and hewing closer to the case at hand though is the recount of the 2007 Pampanga gubernatorial polls. We all know where that ended.

Sans an iota of doubt on the integrity, dignity, and dedication of the teachers.    

The President's point man, DPWH's finger man

 

YEAH, EVERY Juan – and Juana and Juanix to be universally gender-sensitive – knows Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon is President Marcos Jr’s point person for infra, and before that for transportation.

Really in character, as Dizon’s presidential point-personality merely crossed over from the Duterte administration where it was in fact birthed and bred: 1) as president-CEO of the Bases Conversion and Development Authority, the point man for the development of New Clark City, notably the construction of world-class sports facilities in time for the 2019 SEA Games – never mind the much-criticized P50-million “kaldero” used as the cauldron for the Games; and 2) as deputy chief implementer of the National Task Force Against Covid-19, the point man for the government’s Test, Trace, and Treat (T3) program, even earning him the moniker “testing czar.”

So ingrained is this point persona in Dizon that he has come to channel it in his body language, literally with the forefinger, whether he is inspecting infra projects, fielding media questions, or holding meetings with his minions. 

Case in point is his recent inspection blitz in Pampanga where Dizon’s finger made a dramatic standout: at the collapsed – for the nth time – slope protection of the Candating flood control project; at the stalled flyover construction project in Angeles City; and at the proposed site for a bypass road connecting NLEX to some barangays in Mabalacat City.  

With cleaning DPWH of graft and corruption included in his functions as infrastructure point man, Dizon has naturally assumed the akin persona of finger man, openly demonstrated in Candating when he named three DPWH personnel he suspended for allegedly demanding 8% kickbacks in government projects.

Point person. Finger man. It serves Dizon, the government, and the people well thus far. That we have to concede. May he keep it with the right finger.

 

Photos from the web.

HINDI AKO CONGTRACTOR: DON’T US, DONG!

 

Dong denying. ABS-CBN

“MAY ALLEGED links kay former Congressman Dong Gonzales ang kontratista, so we have to look into that… Meron ding mga alegasyon na hindi talaga sila yung gumagawa, may ibang gumagawa.”

On national TV and social media, Public Works Sec. Vince Dizon finally disclosed what just everyone in Pampanga had long known – the former House senior deputy speaker’s alleged connection with the contractor of the thrice-collapsed Candating flood control project.

 Sec. Dizon alleging, ABS-CBN

Maybe in Dizon’s next flash of revelation, he would divulge the blood, if not business, lines bonding Eddmari Construction with 4^th District Rep. Anna York-Bondoc’s husband, San Luis Mayor Jay Sagum.

Eddmari Construction owner Edgardo Sagum and company officials with unidentified DPWH functionary and you know who at the company depot. Contributed photo

Anyways, Dizon’s (un)reveal of late, a mere allegation at that, pales and fades under the brilliance of Ombudsman Boying Remulla’s direct accusation of Gonzales: “Congtractor yan eh… People didn’t believe that there would be accountability whatsoever in violating the law, harap-harapan kasi nga walang manghuhuli. Bawal iyan eh. It’s a prohibited activity, it’s a conflict of interest found in so many laws on corruption so mahirap na makatakas diyan.” That was on Nov. 20, 2025.

 

Boying’s virtual indictment of Gonzales. News 5

Unlike his reaction to Remulla’s virtual indictment which he simply dismissed with the pro-forma: “While I welcome any inquiry on the matter, I am not aware of an ongoing Ombudsman formal investigation against me on prohibited interests,” Gonzales was vehement in his denial of Dizon’s mere allegation.  

“Hindi ko kilala si Eddmari. Kung engineer man yan, engineer ako, di ko pa nakikita ng personal. Okay, ang pamilya ko contractor yan, pero ako hindi ako congtractor… Bakit ko pa hihiramin si Eddmari? Bakit di ko gamitin yung family ko kung ako ang gagawa?” Gonzales said at the public hearing on Candating called by the local government of Arayat with local DPWH officials and Eddmari Construction representatives.

Picture says it all. SunStar-Pampanga

To be fair, we give Gonzales the benefit of the doubt: that he did not know Eddmari from any other contactor, er, contractor. Out in the open though is his rather deep concern with the Candating project.  

In January 2025, still the sitting House senior deputy speaker and Pampanga 3^rd District representative, Gonzales had this learned take of the August 2024 Candating collapse: “The project, a 110.2-meter flood mitigation structure, suffered damage due to a combination of natural forces and design vulnerabilities.”

Emphasizing: “The repair is expected to be completed by April 2025 at no cost to the government, as the project is still under warranty (by the contractor).”

Further noting that “Officials are also considering additional measures to prevent future occurrences.”

More than congressman, Gonzales took the role of contractor, construction foreman, and DPWH spokesman rolled into one there. To no avail, as by July 2025, whatever repairs – completed or not, whatever additional measures – instituted or not, were obliterated by another collapse of the flood mitigation structure.   

Still the civil engineer that he is and the contractor that he says he once was, Gonzales attributed to “natural forces” the 2024 collapse, the most recent one he deemed an “act of God” outside human control. Where others point, all too loudly, to substandard sheet piles used as retention walls.  

Sheet piles become Dong

It is precisely to the sheet piles that people in Pampanga, principally in Mexico and Arayat, made the most obvious, if perceived, connection between Gonzales and the Candating project.

As early as August 2023 – a full year before the first collapse in Candating -- Association of Barangay Captains-Mexico president Terence Napao had called out: “Bagutan la reng sheet piles,” referencing alleged anomalies in the flood control projects in his town contracted to A.D. Gonzales Jr. Construction & Trading, the congressman’s eponymous company.

 
Napao with complaint-affidavit vs. Gonzales

Napao subsequently haled Gonzales to the Ombudsman on graft and corruption charges which was unceremoniously junked for “lack of evidence,” if memory serves right.    

Nature however fortuitously provided the evidence veritably vindicating Napao, when, in September 2024, heavy rains washed out a P199.495-million flood control project along the Abacan River in Barangay Suclaban, Mexico, unearthing visibly short-of-specification sheet piles. The contractor: A.D. Gonzales Jr. Construction & Trading. Project duration: June 13, 2022 to June 7, 2023.  

 

Unearthed sheet piles at Gonzales-contracted flood control project

Thence, Napao’s call Tagalized to “Bunutin ang sheet piles” reverberated across Pampanga in the aftermath of the August 2024 unraveling in Candating.

By induction, the image of the dug-up seemingly shortened sheet piles in the Gonzales project in Mexico readily affixed to the damaged Eddmari project in Arayat, with the all too ubiquitous smiling mug of the congressman attached.  

Is not, is not, is

“Si Dong Gonzales po ay hindi congtractor…hindi po ako congtractor. Ako po ay isang mambabatas.” Insistent was Gonzales in defining himself during the Jan. 26 Arayat public hearing. Noting that he divested from his eponymous company in 2007 when he first won as congressman and throughout his House incumbency until June 2025, interrupted only with his loss in 2013.

A.D. Gonzales Jr. Construction & Trading getting government infrastructure projects contemporaneous with the honorable A. D. Gonzales Jr. holding prime positions in Congress, culminating in the senior deputy speakership in his last term, does not exactly hew to Gonzales’ take of his entrepreneurial-political dichotomy.

It makes the exact definition of the term “Congtractor,” a rather recent portmanteau referencing congressmen who also own, manage, or profit from   construction companies that have secured DPWH contracts.

Pampanga’s Top 10 partaking of P15-B

Of the Top 10 contractors that snagged the lion’s share of DPWH flood control contracts in Pampanga culled from the “Sumbong sa Pangulo” website last August, A.D. Gonzales Jr. Construction and Trading Co. Inc. ranked only Top 5 but was awarded the largest funded single flood control projects in the province, to wit:  

1)     the Abacan River diking and slope protection project in Mexico, Pampanga at a cost of P270.194 million reported completed on March 6, 2024; and

2)     flood control works on the Pasig-Potrero River and the San Fernando-Bacolor section of the San Fernando-Sto. Tomas-Minalin Tail Dike at a cost of P257.255 million and completed on June 5, 2024. (Erroneously placed in La Union in the sumbong website).

Gonzales’ tail dike project

One more project listed under A.D. Gonzales Jr. Construction is another Abacan River diking, also in Mexico but distinguished as Phase I, with a cost of P96.496 million and completed on Nov. 23, 2023. 

Gonzales may have divested from his company, but self-named as it is, he is the very face of it, with his family as the functioning body.

All in the family matrix

In Napao’s complaint with the Ombudsman, listed as officers of A.D. Gonzales Jr. Construction & Trading were Gonzales’ son Aurelio Brenz, then a councilor now vice mayor of the capital city, as the company’s president and majority shareholder; daughter, then-provincial board member now Pampanga 3^rd District Rep. Alyssa Michaela Gonzales, as secretary and treasurer; son Aurelio III, as vice president; daughter Aurelio Michaline as director; and the Gonzales’ elder sister Zenaida Quiambao also director.

“Any right-minded citizen would easily figure out why and how a senior deputy speaker, a city councilor and a bokal (provincial board member) owning a construction company and with DPWH officials under their beck and call were favored with hundreds of millions worth of government contracts,” Napao alleged at the time. “With huge projects such as these, it would be the height of naiveté not to sense a collusion between the congressman’s company and the DPWH.” 

Reminded we are here of an urban legend at the DPWH-3 office first heard before the Covid pandemic: An unnamed honorable member of the House frequenting the director’s office with the standard intro: “I am not a congressman here now. I am a contractor.”

“Si Dong Gonzales po ay hindi congtractor.” Don’t us!

Punto Op-Ed: Dizon backtracking on Candating

 

DPWH Sec. Vince Dizon: We will not let this pass. GNN-44

“UNANG-UNA, mukhang hindi talaga tama ang disenyo nung flood control sa Candating, Arayat. Kung maaalala ninyo pinilit natin yung kontratista na ayusin dahil nagigiba yung mga pundasyon. Eh, ngayon, hanggang ngayon hindi nila maayos-ayos.

So, kailangan na tayong magdesisyon dito na talagang panagutin yung mga dapat managot diyan. Kasama na yung mga tao ng DPWH, kasama yung kontratista, and meron naring nagre-report sa atin na may links sa mga kongresista.

So, lahat yan kailangang imbestigahan natin. At, ah, kung ano man ang rekomendasyon natin isa-submit natin sa Ombudsman at sa DOJ.

Pero hindi talaga maayos-ayos kase mukhang may mali talaga sa disenyo. At kawawa naman yung mga kababayan natin dun na apektado yung mga bahay nila. So, hindi natin pwedeng palampasin ito."

Now, Public Works Sec. Vince Dizon is talking: three days since the latest collapse of the slope protection of the Candating flood control project on Jan 23 – only hours after he led an inspection of the cracked Arnedo Dike road and the unfinished San Agustin Bridge, both in Arayat too, not all that far from Candating.

Dizon should not even be talking about this now, if only he did his job of translating into action the words he uttered right at the site only last Sept. 24 while confronting Engr. Edgardo Sagum, owner of Eddmari Construction & Trading, the Candating project contractor.

Making a direct point at the contractor. CLTV-36

Indeed, his words today are veritably but a rehash of those he mouthed four months ago, to wit:

“Dapat naman (bunutin ang sheet piles), gusto nating malaman kung talagang 36 meters. That’s practically 10-storey building.

Dalawa lang ang problema…either may problema sa paggawa mo or yung design mali. Ganun lang ‘yun. So aalamin natin yan. Kailangan ito ipa-assess yung design nito kung tama ba o hindi.

Ikaw ba talaga ang gumagawa dito? Hindi mo ito sinubcon? Tsini-check ko yan engineer. Ikaw ba talaga ang gumagawa? Iba ang naririnig namin. Basta on record sinabi mo sa akin ikaw ang gumagawa. Malalaman at malalaman ko rin kung sino talaga ang gumagawa dito, kung pinahiram mo lang ang lisensya mo.”

Some foot-in-mouth disease there, Sir Vince?

It is well within reason to assume that Dizon received constant and conscientious apprisal of the Candating project after his biting onsite discourse. Given the fear he instills in the agency since becoming its head.

Hence, he must have known that the sheet piles were not pulled out after some perfunctory tries; that Eddmari Construction – sans any reported design re-assessment – just went on with its way of “repairing” the damage to “completion ahead” of its promised last-week-of-November-2025 target.

 

Crane failing to pull out sheet piles. Pampanga Newsweek

If not Dizon himself, at least his minions at the DPWH-3 and whatever district engineering district that has responsibility of Candating, must have seen or heard the media blast over the repair completion, uniformly quoting Sagum proudly proclaiming: “Tiniyak namin na matapos ito bago pa maabutan ng sunod-sunod na bagyo. Ipinangako namin sa publiko nitong Oktubre na matatapos ito ng huling linggo ng Nobyembre, pero we’ve finished the rehabilitation first week pa lang ng buwan.”

Rehabilitation completed ahead of schedule, Eddmari claims. GNN-44, SunStar-Pampanga  

The absence of any official response from the DPWH to the contractor’s cocky confidence could only mean acquiescence, if not assent.

Here now comes in full force Qui tacet consentire videtur, that assenting-silence doctrine that while quietude assumes consent, silence can also warrant the continuation of wrongdoings.

Thus, Candating caught in a vicious cycle of collapse and desultory rehabilitation and repair for the past three years, at least, to the cost of hundreds of millions, to an even higher cost of human suffering. 

“So, hindi natin pwedeng palampasin ito." So, Dizon is now saying.

“E, noong Setyembre, pinalampas na po ninyo ito.” So, we are retorting.

Same difference. Unconvince us, Vince. Photos grabbed from the web

 

 

Candating: Vince Dizon's own undoing

 

IN HIS inspection of fractured infrastructure projects in Arayat town on Jan. 23, Public Works Sec. Vince Dizon did not come to Candating. So Candating came to him, if only to impact in the secretary its utmost gravity as much as a physical peril in the immediate vicinity as to the (un)seriousness of government in pursuing transparency and accountability in the flood control project controversies.

                 Cracked stretch Arnedo Dike

 
    Unfinished San Agustin Norte Bridge

Not that the cracked and sinking slope protection of the Arnedo Dike in Barangay Cupang, and the as-yet-unfinished-after-so-many-years San Aguistin Norte Bridge were less worthy of the secretary’s inspection, but that Candating merited greater, if graver, concern.

Hence, mere hours after Dizon left town, what was supposed to have been completed repairs on the slope protection in Candating collapsed again, taking along its wake at least 16 houses, leaving the whole barangay terrified.

 

                    Homes destroyed on the collapsed slope protection in Candating  

That Dizon did not even spare a peep at Candating speaks volumes, the site absent in his itinerary for the day absolutely droll.  

‘Face of failed flood control projects’

  

While it has been the subject of sporadic reports in the local media as early as 2023 and getting full blown coverage in August 2024 when it sustained considerable damage at the onslaught of Super Typhoon Carina and the southwest monsoon, it was in August 2025 that the Candating flood control project was inflicted upon the national consciousness with Sen. Ping Lacson naming it as “the face of failed flood control projects,” evidenced by the year-after-year program for its rehabilitation uniformly pegged at P100 million, its contract price as uniformly tagged at P91 million, its contracts as uniformly awarded to Eddmari Construction and Trading Corp. from the original P20 million for the project in 2018, ballooning to over P274.8 million in repeated repairs, and still, as uniformly, collapsing. 

 

Sen. Ping Lacson’s matrix of Candating contracts awarded to Eddmari Construction

Dizon could have taken the cue from there, as indeed, he did as newly minted DPWH secretary.

‘Bunutin ang sheet piles’

It was only last Sept. 24, right atop the sunken, cracked slopes of the dike in Candating that Dizon, with then Independent Commission on Infrastructure special advisor Benjie Magalong in tow, famously cried out: “Bunutin ang sheet pile at magkaalaman kung 36 meters nga ba.”

 

             His rage bordering on the righteous, Dizon confronts Sagum

Right to the face of Edgardo Sagum, owner of Eddmari Construction & Trading, Dizon damned the project as “substandard,” if only of it collapsing within a year of completion, not to mention a previous collapse even before a prior completion the year before. Seeing either faulty planning or flawed implementation as the cause, hence pulling out the sheet piles will provide the answer.

 Failed try at pulling out the sheet piles. Pampanga Newsweek

No, the sheet piles were never pulled, not for lack of trying – to be fair – but for “engineering” issues – soft ground unable to hold the weight of the crane to pull out the piles, the bottom ends of the sheet piles interlocked and welded together, absence of appropriate crane for the pullout – combined to make Dizon’s call as well shouted under the deeper waters of the Pampanga River.  

Thereafter, we never read of Dizon making even but a casual inquiry on the Candating sheet piles. In all appearances, everything was left for Eddmari Construction to tie up the loose ends and mop up, in its own way, by its own means, unreported much less unchallenged. That is one all-too-red a flag to unsee. That, Dizon did not or chose not to even notice.

Case unclosed

A closed case Candating may have been to Dizon. No doubt given by his minions’ subservience, er, subscribing to some perceived full compliance of Eddmari Construction with the promised completion of repair in November 2025. The stillness pervading in Candating among residents and barangay officials, even of the local government unit, an evident acquiescence.  

No, Dizon did not have to stand triumphantly on a repaired Candating flood control project, the media in tow, and hail it an exemplar of the “Build Better More” flagship infra program of the Marcos administration. Tooting his own trumpet is not in his character.

He would rather go to controversial infrastructures where he could push for results – and do his best at performative outrage, where he has had a rather successful run from the EDSA Busway to the Maharlika Highway, on to MacArthur Highway in Apalit, Arnedo Dike and San Agustin Norte Bridge in Arayat on Jan. 23. Only to be kicked off centerstage and put under the harshest limelight, so to speak, by the latest collapse of the slope protection in Candating. 

In effect, the latest unraveling in Candating spells Dizon’s own undoing. His is now the body to the very face of failed flood control projects. That is following that other Lacson’s logic. Photos: Pampanga PIO, FB pages