Lawmaker urges LTO chief to go on leave

MANILA, Philippines –  The chairman of the House committee on transportation urged Land Transportation Office (LTO) chief Virginia Torres yesterday to go on leave “to spare President Aquino from further embarrassment.”

Southern Leyte Rep. Roger Mercado made the appeal after the Department of Justice (DOJ) recommended the filing of administrative and possibly criminal charges against Torres.

The DOJ suggested that the LTO chief take an indefinite leave of absence, but Torres rejected the suggestion, saying she was ready to face the charges to be filed against her.

“If she’s a true friend of the President as she claims she is, she would take the honorable way out given her by the DOJ,” Mercado said.

“We cannot have a loose cannon in government who thinks of herself as being above the law and beyond the disciplinary powers of both the DOJ and the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) because of her self proclaimed ‘closeness’ to the President,” he said.

The Chief Executive and Torres were reportedly once shooting range buddies, as were the President and Local Government Undersecretary Rico Puno, whom Aquino had put in charge of the Philippine National Police.

Mercado said if Torres refuses to go on leave, she should be immediately suspended, along with her assistant, Menelia Mortel, who is included in the DOJ recommendation for the filing of administrative and criminal charges.

The justice department endorsed the filing of charges against the two for their alleged complicity in the failed takeover of the Stradcom Corp. offices inside the LTO compound along East Avenue in Quezon City last Dec. 9.

IT provider

Stradcom is the information technology provider of the LTO and has been rocked by an intra-corporate quarrel. The company is earning billions a year from its controversial contract with the LTO, which has been the subject of various congressional inquiries that yielded no results.

Torres supposedly sided with the group of Bonifacio Sumbilla and Aderito Yujuico, which tried to take over the company and its LTO offices from the group of Cesar Quiambao.

The DOJ panel that looked into the controversy, which Undersecretary Francisco Baraan headed, found Torres to be “at the very least grossly negligent” in allowing the takeover attempt to happen.