Is there still any hope of reforms at LTO?

EVEN AS President Aquino continues to ride on his campaign slogan—“kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap”—people he has chosen as his alter egos, Cabinet members, among them, seem to be doing the exact opposite. This is the reason the President is losing the trust of the people.

Our group, the Road Users Protection Advocates (RUPA), has filed graft charges against two top officials of the Department of Transportation and Communications, headed by Secretary Jose de Jesus, for favoring Stradcom Corp., the sole IT provider of the Land Transportation Office (LTO), which has entrenched itself in the LTO since the time of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. We are set to include De Jesus in the charges, for countenancing the decisions of his subordinates. We have reason to believe that the two officials gave undue advantage to Stradcom, thus compromising the public interest.

During the Arroyo years, when Stradcom had the monopoly of the lucrative business of operating the LTO database, no LTO chief had the courage to review Stradcom’s contract with the LTO.

LTO chief Virginia Torres gave us hope when she ordered, before her suspension, the review of the contract. The review revealed that Stradcom had not been true to the provisions of the contract. But the suspension of Torres dimmed our hopes. She is now reviled for allegedly being a roadblock to the reforms that De Jesus wants to effect at the LTO and DOTC.

Our group feels that De Jesus’ statements in support of the fight against corruption are contrary to his actions. If he really wants to fight corruption, then he would have welcomed the complaint we filed before the Office of the Ombudsman against two of his subordinates. Instead he brushed off the complaint and, apparently, defended Stradcom, a money machine created by the previous administration. More importantly, in the attempt to discredit the complaint filed by RUPA, the DOTC and the Quiambao faction in the Stradcom undermined the authority and independence of the Office of the Ombudsman and the integrity of our country’s justice system by making statements on the validity of our complaint and the concrete evidence that we have presented, a matter that is solely within the province of the Ombudsman.

—RAYMUNDO L. JUNIA,
president,
Road Users Protection Advocates (RUPA),
2926 Finlandia cor. Volta Streets,
Barangay San Isidro, Makati City