The candidate's top five accomplishments and contributions for the last 15 years or so

Throughout two full terms and a few months into his third term as a lawmaker in the lower chamber, Villar filed at least 184 principally authored bills, at least 12 of which were passed into law.

Among these laws are R.A. No. 10909 which prohibits business establishments from shortchanging customers even if the change due is only a small amount and R.A. No. 10644 or the Go Negosyo Act which supports micro, small and medium enterprises.

Villar’s appointment as DPWH secretary was met with objections that pointed to potential conflicts of interest in violation of R.A. No. 6713, or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, due to his family’s extensive business holdings like Vista Land and Camella Homes. His allies waved away such concerns since his DPWH work deals with infrastructure projects and not the grant of business permits for housing and construction projects. Additional safeguards also had to be complied with such as divestment of business interests and appropriate disclosures in SALNs. Villar also owed that his family would not participate in the bidding of DPWH-implemented public-private partnership projects.

However, in December 2019, the Villar clan’s wide-ranging influence in business and commerce resurfaced. DOJ undersecretary Aglipay-Villar inhibited herself from the justice department’s review of the water concessionaire contracts between the government and Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System, given her close ties to the Villar family or the owners of Prime Water Infrastructure Corp.

As secretary of DPWH, Villar oversaw the bulk of the Duterte administration’s infrastructure projects under its flagship Build, Build, Build program across the country, with such projects getting massive funding infusions even during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Through its five-year implementation, the program has constructed over 30,000 kilometers of road, over 150,000 classrooms, over 5,000 bridges, over 11,000 flood control structures, and other major infrastructure projects as of mid-2021. The DPWH also claims it generated an estimated 6.6 million jobs for Filipinos from 2016 to 2020, with another 1.6 million jobs to be generated from the department's 2021 budget.

In 2017, the National Economic and Development Authority identified 75 priority projects to be undertaken under the ambitious projections of the Build, Build, Build program but several revisions were made such as the removal of about half of the original list, the addition of 71 other – some of which were already ongoing – projects and other adjustments in 2021.

Only 14 major projects out of the expanded target of 119 projects have been completed as of February 2022, according to the BBB official website. Another 10 projects were targeted for completion by year-end.

In 2020, the DPWH received a P581.7 billion budget; it was increased to P667.3 billion out of the P4.506 trillion budget for 2021. This increase came despite the P135.8 billion worth of “reappropriations” and “lump sum appropriations” involving 5,913 DPWH infrastructure projects questioned during the 2020 budget deliberations. Senator Panfilo Lacson, in particular, questioned the realignment of funds to the COVID-19 response and said appropriating such sums may be unconstitutional because lump sums are expressly prohibited and the P135 billion (initially pegged at P73.5 billion) in items rehashed from the 2020 national budget should have been discontinued completely if they are to qualify for fresh funding. Instead, the 2021 NEP proposes only fractions of their original allocations. Villar insisted that the DPWH complied with line-item budgeting and that no lump sum allocations were made.

Also in the last quarter of 2020, President Duterte during his public addresses railed against the DPWH for supposed rampant corruption. Although the president cleared Villar of wrongdoing, the latter ordered the creation of an anti-corruption task force composed of five officials to probe fellow officers and employees within the department. Some doubted the effectiveness of an internal investigative body rather than an independent probe. The Task-Force Against Corruption later took over the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission’s investigation into cases of alleged corruption involving certain lawmakers and at least 14 DPWH district engineers.