Two Facebook users and a page posted a video claiming that Public Works Secretary Vince Dizon supposedly said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. ordered him to “defend” the agency, which is at the center of a massive flood control scandal in the country. The clip is misleading.
Dizon did not make such a remark. The FB posts edited his remark from an Oct. 20, 2025 Senate hearing, where he said Marcos directed him to reform the DPWH, not to safeguard it.
VERA Files traced the earliest copy of the video to an FB user who posted it on Jan. 9. The 19-second clip combines two separate statements by Dizon. In the first, he said:
“Sinabihan ako ng pangulo na tulungan siya sa DPWH. Hindi naman niya sinabi sa’kin na depensahan ko ‘yung DPWH (The president told me to help him in the DPWH. He did not tell me to defend the DPWH).”
Dizon allegedly contradicted his previous statement in the second clip, saying:
“Ang inutos po ng pangulo sa ‘kin, depensahan ang DPWH (The president ordered me to defend the DPWH).”
The video also bore a superimposed text that read:
“napaka sinungaling mo nahuli sarili niyang bibig Ano ba talaga Vince (You’re such a liar, you were caught by your own words. What is it really, Vince)?”
An FB page and a user republished the altered 19-second video on Jan. 15, asking if Dizon was caught by his own words.
A cursory search on Google shows that the remark made by Dizon in the first clip was from an actual interview. In a “Salamat PBMM podcast” uploaded on YouTube by one of its hosts, KaCoffee, on Oct. 30, 2025, Dizon said Marcos did not instruct him to defend the DPWH but rather to reform the agency.
The second clip, which shows the Public Works secretary supposedly saying that Marcos instructed him to defend the agency, was cut and edited to omit the word “hindi” from his original statement. The video was taken from the Oct. 20, 2025 Senate hearing on the DPWH’s proposed 2026 budget, where Dizon actually stated:
“Ang inutos po ng pangulo sa ‘kin, hindi depensahan ang DPWH. Ang utos po ng pangulo sa atin ay repormahin…at baguhin ang DPWH (The president’s instruction to me was not to defend DPWH. The instruction of the president was to reform, and reorient DPWH).”
The misleading video surfaced four days after Marcos signed on Jan. 5 the P6.793-trillion national budget for 2026. The DPWH received the second-highest allocations of P530.9 billion.
Posted by two FB users and page DUTERTE Media (created on Jan. 9, 2015 as PIO Mandaue), the three posts with an edited clip of Dizon have so far garnered 3,300 reactions; 591 comments; 1,076 shares; and 125,900 views.
