Aquino practically lawyering for Torres

The problem is no longer just Virginia Torres; it’s President Aquino’s refusal to remove his blinders in coddling Torres and throwing a monkey wrench into the wheels of justice.

P-Noy may be the president but he is wrong to substitute his gut feel on the claimed innocence of Torres for the position of the Department of Justice and Department of Transportation and Communications that Torres should be suspended and charged administratively for partisanship in the Stradcom issue.

The DOJ made its recommendation based on public hearings held by a panel of prosecutors who looked long and hard at the evidence, including that damning CCTV footage that showed Torres with the Sumbilla group as it forcibly took over the Stradcom building last December.

P-Noy’s adoption of Torres’ line that she went to Stradcom, the IT provider of Land Transportation Office (LTO), to protect its database, is pathetic. The President should be told that if Torres really wanted to protect the database she would not have allowed the Sumbilla group to use armed men in taking over the facility. As it turned out, the LTO database needed protecting from the assault carried out by the Sumbilla group. I don’t know how the President can explain that finding by the DOJ that Torres, on the eve of the assault on Stradcom, even ordered the LTO’s own security guards to stand down and allow Sumbilla and his armed men to barge into the IT firm’s facilities.

What the Sumbilla group did—which, according to DOJ prosecutors, was abetted by Torres—was pure anarchy and a blatant disregard of the law as it failed to show any court order to support its claim of ownership and seizure of Stradcom.

And P-Noy is now justifying Torres’ action and, in effect, that anarchic attack on a facility that is inside a government compound? This is not the “daang matuwid” that P-Noy promised; this is as crooked as crooked gets.

President Aquino is not only risking a further erosion of his trust rating, he is courting possible impeachment for his blatant misuse of presidential powers just to save the skin of a shooting range buddy and provincemate.

Torres has become more arrogant in clinging to her post at the LTO precisely because President Aquino, while not a lawyer, is practically lawyering for her.

—ANGELO LOUIE CORONEL,
angelo.louie@gmail.com