As some tourism stakeholders continue to wonder what brand of superglue Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA) chief operating officer Mark Lapid uses to keep his grip on the post so firm, we thought it best to take the question straight to the source, the appointing power in Malacañang.

The query, however, was brushed aside. The Presidential Communications Office has yet to respond to our question, raised merely to relay what many in the tourism sector are asking: Does Mark Lapid have a monopoly on the Department of Tourism’s infrastructure arm?

“If Lapid’s term is coterminous with Marcos Jr., then his already 15-year term would be lengthened another three years. He must really be exceptional for three Presidents to hold him in such high regard,” whispered a tourism sector veteran to Nosy Tarsee.

Lapid, a former Pampanga governor, was appointed COO of TIEZA by his fellow Cabalen, then-President and now Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, in 2009, serving until 2016, after he had served as general manager of the Philippine Tourism Authority in 2008. 

In 2016, he ran for senator but lost, placing 19th.

After a five-year hiatus, he was appointed to TIEZA again by President Rodrigo Roa Duterte in January 2021. And in July 2022, Lapid took the oath before Marcos Jr. to remain in the post, thus giving him the rare honor of serving three Presidents.

A separate source said that since 2022, Lapid’s projects have focused solely on the construction of Tourist Rest Areas, aimed at ensuring visitors a “seamless and enjoyable journey.”

Another project of Lapid’s is the Tourism Champions Challenge, which supports the directive of President Marcos Jr. to empower local governments and strengthen the tourism sector through strategic infrastructure investments and grassroots development.

“But let us not forget that Mark was implicated, along with his father, Senator Lito Lapid, in the P568-million lahar quarry funds controversy in Pampanga filed by then Governor Eddie Panlilio. It is therefore troubling that Lapid now has control over substantial funds from travel taxes amounting to P7.8 billion,” Nosy Tarsee learned from the source.

The case against the Lapids was filed with the Office of the Ombudsman in June 2009, after both had alternated as governors of Pampanga.

Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez cleared father and son of the plunder charges in 2011, in what had been described as a “midnight order” signed a month before Gutierrez’s resignation.