De Lima: Fate of LTO’s Torres up to Aquino

The Department of Justice (DoJ) is leaving the fate of embattled Land Transportation Office (LTO) chief Virginia Torres up to President Benigno Aquino III, who appointed her to the post.

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said it would be inappropriate for her to compel the President to adopt the recommendation of a DoJ fact-finding panel that Torres be slapped with a preventive suspension for gross neglect of duty and misconduct.

“We recognize that Assistant Secretary Torres is a presidential appointee and, therefore, the decision on whether or not to adopt the specific recommendation … really lies with the Office of the President,” De Lima told reporters.

Torres hails from the same province as Mr. Aquino and is known to be his shooting buddy.

The justice secretary said that the DoJ panel’s “mission” to gather facts on the violent incident that occurred within the LTO compound in Quezon City on Dec. 9, 2010, had been accomplished. “In so far as DoJ is concerned, it’s already out of our hands,” De Lima said.

But De Lima admitted that it had been some time since the DoJ fact-finding team furnished Malacañang with the results of its investigation into Torres’ alleged involvement in the supposed takeover of the office of Stradcom Corp., the LTO’s information technology provider, by one of the factions within the company battling for its control.

“It would not be proper for me to preempt and to try to pressure the (President) to act on our recommendation,” she said.

The alleged forcible takeover of the Stradcom office affected the LTO’s delivery of services nationwide on that day.

De Lima said Justice Undersecretary Francisco Baraan, who led the DoJ fact-finding committee, on Wednesday briefed the President on the panel’s recommendations upon the latter’s request.

Mr. Aquino’s reluctance to give former Transportation Secretary Jose “Ping” de Jesus a free hand in deciding the Torres case was reported to be one of the reasons the key Cabinet member decided to suddenly quit his post last week.

It was De Jesus who asked De Lima to look into Torres’ reported partiality toward one of the groups claiming ownership of Stradcom, which bagged a P2.8-billion contract to run LTO’s IT system from 1998 to 2013.

Malacañang said Torres was expected to go back to work within the week after taking a leave of absence.