Watching the unfolding drama around the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) flood-control projects, many can’t help but feel that Secretary Vince Dizon and his team have forgotten the fundamental truth about what a real boss is.

In the scramble to respond to allegations of anomalies, what we’ve witnessed isn’t leadership. It is political self-preservation, where the people the boss is supposed to lead become expendable pawns.

He didn't stand before his people. He stepped to the side—and pointed at them. No doubt it wasn’t toughness, but cowardice disguised as accountability and just trying to save his own skin.

The script is painfully familiar. Allegations surface, public anger boils, and the media hungers for a villain. Instead of being the calm and steadying hand, Dizon has been quick to distance himself, to promise heads will roll, and parade his own regional directors and engineers before the court of public opinion. He has been the sword, not the shield. In doing so, Dizon has abandoned his most critical duty as a leader – to protect the integrity of the process and the presumption of innocence for his people.

True leadership in a crisis demands courage, not convenience. It demands standing in the storm with your team, not pointing at them from the safety of the shore. A leader’s first statement should have been, “We take these allegations with utmost seriousness. We will cooperate fully with any investigation. My people are professionals who serve the public, and they deserve a fair process based on evidence, not speculation. I am responsible for this department, and we will get to the truth.” Period.

That’s not what happened, though. The narrative has been neatly narrowed to “corrupt engineers” and “wayward regional directors.” How convenient. How utterly simplistic.

Does anyone truly believe the multi-billion-peso ecosystem of flood-control corruption—if it exists—was invented and operated solely by mid-level civil servants? That it sprouted from regional offices without seeds planted much, much higher up?

Everyone in the know knows where the real roots lie. They lie in the political machinery that treats the national budget as a pork barrel buffet. They lie in the “insertions” and “favored projects” dictated by lawmakers who hold the power of the purse. They lie in the systemic pressure applied to agencies to accommodate contractors with the right political sponsors.

The real scandal isn’t just what might have happened on the ground. The real scandal is the entire structure that enables such anomalies. Yet, the Secretary’s rhetoric does nothing to challenge this structure. Why? Because pointing the finger downward is easy. Pointing it sideways—or upward—at the political forces that shape his department’s budget and priorities? That takes a spine.

By throwing his people to the wolves, Secretary Dizon has done profound damage. He has shattered morale within the DPWH. What security would a hardworking, honest engineer feel now? He has taught them that loyalty is a one-way street that ends at the Secretary’s doorstep.

For him, loyalty only goes one way – up. That's how he is destroying an agency, not fixing it.

Reforming an institution is by cleaning it with a surgeon’s precision, not a butcher’s axe. Reform it by defending the innocent as fiercely as you pursue the guilty. Reform it by having the courage to say, “The problem is also in the laws, in the budgeting process, in the political interference.”

Lest we forget that justice is not served by sacrifice, but by the truth, which is often complex and inconvenient. A leader who cannot stand between his team and a mob—whether that mob is the public, the press, or political opponents—has already failed. He has failed his people, and in the end, he fails the very institution he is trying to protect, because an institution built on fear and abandonment is already crumbling.

Secretary Dizon, the flood you need to control first is the one of fear and opportunism raging through your own department.

A true leader doesn't feed his people to the wolves to make the noise stop. He stands between the wolves and his people.

Be the shield. Not the sword.