Man at 0.1 percent
His tenure as PNP chief was brief and ended amid a disagreement over senior officer reassignments and civilian oversight.
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His tenure as PNP chief was brief and ended amid a disagreement over senior officer reassignments and civilian oversight.
Long before I understood the police as an institution, I knew them as men who continued to visit our family home after my maternal grandfather died.
In the late 1970s, my grandfather founded the Caloocan City Police Trust Fund to help officers and their families through difficult times. I no longer have its records, but I remember former beneficiaries returning years later, many already retired. They came not on official business, but because they remembered.
That childhood impression stayed with me. I later aspired to become an officer through the Philippine Military Academy. I did not make the cut, but my respect for disciplined public service endured. Perhaps that explains why one name caught my attention when Pulse Asia published its early surveys for the 2028 elections.
Nicolas Torre III registered 0.1-percent in a six-name presidential scenario and 0.5-percent in a seven-name vice presidential scenario. The figures establish neither a constituency nor an intention to run, only that the former Philippine National Police chief was tested for the country’s two highest elective offices.
My history explains why I noticed him. It does not argue his case.
His tenure as PNP chief was brief and ended amid a disagreement over senior officer reassignments and civilian oversight. No administrative or criminal charge was filed against him over that episode.
More relevant now is the public official before us: associated with command, consequential operations, and institutional discipline, but without a fully articulated national political proposition.
Discipline may serve government, but it cannot alone define democratic leadership. That also requires persuasion, restraint, fidelity to rights and a vision larger than order.
Torre was born in Jolo, Sulu, and raised in Mindanao, including South Cotabato. His family roots reach Iloilo through Tigbauan on his father’s side and Dumangas on his mother’s. He now serves as general manager of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority.
His journey crosses the map: born in the Sulu archipelago, formed in Mindanao, rooted in the Visayas and now entrusted with responsibilities in the capital.
He came to Manila carrying Mindanao. I was raised in Manila carrying a longing for it.
Metro Manila now measures how command experience translates into civilian administration.
The work before the MMDA includes helping reclaim the Pasig River, not merely as a cleaner waterway but as part of the life and imagination of the metropolis. It must coordinate when the habagat and heavy rains expose the capital’s vulnerability to flooding, and enforce discipline on roads where impatience, privilege, and disregard compete for space.
These are not auditions for higher office. They are obligations of the office Torre holds, and how he meets them will inform any future judgment of him.
For now, Torre remains where this inquiry began: at 0.1 percent.
More useful than wondering whether it will rise is watching what he does with his present authority. Government is improved not by promise alone, but by turning responsibility into work people can see and feel.
That brings me back to Quezon’s reminder that however bad the government may become, it can still be improved, and that the work of improving it remains with the same people from whom all public authority comes.
Can Nicolas Torre III help provide part of the answer?
Not by climbing from the bottom of a survey or relying on titles already held, but by showing that command can mature into stewardship, discipline can remain faithful to rights and power can stay answerable to the people.
An elective position would place that authority on a different footing. An appointment carries delegated responsibility; a direct mandate comes from the people. Should Torre ever seek and receive one, the measure would be how command and discipline find their fullest expression in stewardship.
