Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is to deliver his annual state of the nation speech with a bleak backdrop of a major corruption scandal that he exposed last year but has implicated his key allies; his estranged vice president’s impeachment trial; and the global economic fallout from a resurgent war in Iran.

Two former Philippine government engineers have told a televised inquiry that most flood control projects, road and other infrastructures they helped oversee in recent years in a province near the capital were substandard or overpriced to compensate for huge kickbacks given to congressmen and senators.