Torre is his appointee, and if the President is serious about restoring public confidence, he should not wait for the LTO or MMDA to manufacture an accountability narrative that conveniently leaves Torre untouched.
As President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. plays this chess game called political survival — amid a growing perception that his government is corrupt to the core — he should start firing people who are tipping the scales against him.
He should begin with Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) general manager Nicolas Torre III, whom he already let go once as chief of the Philippine National Police for insubordination. This time, Marcos should send Torre to pasteur for good for thinking himself above the law.
Torre is a Marcos appointee, and that makes this more than an MMDA problem. If the President appointed him, then the President should also have the political courage to remove him.
The President cannot keep asking the public to believe that his government is serious about cleaning house while officials embroiled in controversies are allowed to simply carry on. Every such episode adds to the perception that accountability depends not on what one did, but on whom one knows.
The latest developments in the saga of Torre’s private SUV only make his continued stay at the MMDA harder to justify and the whole brouhaha so bizarre.
Land Transportation Office (LTO) Assistant Secretary Markus Lacanilao has repeatedly emphasized that the driver was the one operating the vehicle and has now imposed the heaviest administrative penalty on him.
By revoking his license, Lacanilao turned Torre’s driver into a convenient fall guy. Meanwhile, MMDA Chairman Romando Artes has said there is no suspension order against Torre and that the incident will not affect his service. Can these two still sleep at night?
Torre owns the vehicle. Torre was inside it when it used the Busway. Torre admitted that he wanted it to be his official MMDA patrol vehicle. He subsequently apologized, knowing how lame his excuses were for breaking regulations like license plate tampering.
Are we supposed to believe that the driver independently decided to put an MMDA logo and body number on his employer’s private SUV, install a siren and blinker, obtain a red government plate assigned to another MMDA vehicle, and take the whole contraption onto the EDSA Busway?
Really?
Employees, particularly drivers, do not ordinarily redesign their bosses’ vehicles and impersonate government patrol cars on their own initiative. Human nature suggests that a driver entrusted with a superior’s vehicle does what he is told, particularly when the modifications are so conspicuous and the supposed purpose is official business.
If the LTO wants to establish accountability, it should investigate who authorized the plate transfer, the markings, the siren and blinker, and the use of the vehicle as an MMDA patrol unit. But then this agency under Lacanilao is so hopeless; ditto with the MMDA under Artes.
Lacanilao has repeatedly said there are no VIPs in enforcing the law. Empty words. Because if the driver alone is responsible for everything that happened inside Torre’s SUV, then the public deserves to know exactly how an ordinary employee acquired the authority to turn his boss’s private vehicle into a government-marked patrol car.
Until that question is answered, the LTO’s tough action against the driver looks less like equal justice than an elaborate exercise in making sure the blame stops one seat short of where it should. And Marcos should take notice. He should not wait for the LTO or MMDA to manufacture an accountability narrative that conveniently leaves Torre untouched.
The President should sack Torre since this disgraced ex-cop is too thick-skinned to resign.
