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Manila Bulletin devider Opinion devider As in 'vincere'

As in 'vincere'

Published Aug 21, 2025 12:02 am  |  Updated Aug 20, 2025 04:07 pm
MEDIUM RARE
JULLIE Y. DAZA
JULLIE Y. DAZA
It’s official. Survey shows two out of three respondents describing Transportation Secretary Vince Dizon as likeable.
Those three individuals belong to one household — mine — the third member explaining that her YouTube habit includes only people she knows, such as television and movie stars. Secretary Dizon? Who?
I don’t know him, either, but I like the way he’s everywhere. He looks the type to think outside the box and, based on what we have seen of his public persona, he’s the sort who prefers to get out of that box of a space called the office. If I may say so myself, the journalists covering him seem happy to follow him wherever he goes, to EDSA or with PBBM to Calumpit, Bulacan.
Recently, he was caught jumping onto the rear end of a bus to catch a ride. The young lady standing beside him was all smiles as she watched him — it looked like a welcoming smile — while he tried to steady himself on his feet, hanging on to the law of gravity as the driver paid no mind, conscious only of the need to go, go, go, fast and faster.
An onlooker would say that the good secretary of Transportation, no less, was putting himself in the shoes of the thousands of commuters who go through this exercise at least twice a day — early in the morning to go to work and late at night to go home — but that he was lucky 1) he didn’t have to do it every day and 2) he didn’t have to do it twice in one day. Commuters might add that he should have conducted his experiment at 7 a.m. or after 5 p.m., when the Metro Manila transportation experience is a requirement for beatification.
What did Secretary Vince — as in “vincere,” Latin for “to overcome” — learn from this experiment that must’ve opened his eyes wide? Did his experience match ours? What can he do for us? Do tell.
The secretary is 51 years young, with a professional background that portrays him as a head-to-toe technocrat. The consensus among us three is that if there were a few more public servants “like Vince,” work in government, aka public service, will produce more results more quickly.

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