Motivation

POLITICALLY MOTIVATED. So cried Guagua, Pampanga Mayor Dante Torres of his “latest ordeal” that is the 90-day preventive suspension slapped on him by the Sandiganbayan.

This, arising from charges of violating Article 220 of the Revised Penal Code on the illegal use of public funds amounting to P2.76 million for the rehabilitation of the Manuel P. Santiago Park at the town plaza. Which, it was alleged, were allotted for the rehabilitation of the Aurelio Tolentino Frontage Area (whatever that is), and the purchase of a refrigerator van and heavy equipment as specified in a municipal ordinance enacted in July 2014.
"It is sad that the people of Guagua are being affected by this," lamented Torres.

Of course, Sir. And they should really be affected.

But isn’t this Torres’ second or third suspension from office?

In October 2016, the Ombudsman found Torres administratively liable for simple misconduct per Article 171 (4) of the Revised Penal Code and meted him the medium penalty of suspension for a period of three months.

The Department of the Interior and Local Government served the Ombudsman’s order in December 2016, so it was reported.

I am not sure, as there is scant information in the web, if that suspension came from a different case, but in February 2016, one Guagua resident named Juan Pring haled Torres to the Ombudsman for grave misconduct and gross neglect of duty arising from the mayor’s signing a marriage certificate without him officiating the wedding.

Two, if not three, suspensions in a period of two years. At least two articles of the Revised Penal Code violated. That’s one heck of political motivation heaped upon Torres by his detractors.    

Which brings to mind the unforgettable ejaculation of the then-similarly situated once-and-forever-future-mayor of Asenso Mexico fondly monikered “Tigas.”  

“That’s very politics.” So cried Don Ernesto Punsalan over dwRW appending political motives to the allegations of graft exposed by his then vice mayor.
My remembrance of this segued to a piece I wrote in the defunct Pampanga News circa 2006 thus:
Politically motivated: the omnibus catch phrase that has become a convenient and uniform, albeit foolhardy, escape clause officials haled to the Ombudsman or the courts on charges of graft and corruption.
Politically motivated, in thus mintage, makes a mockery of reason, if not a negation of logic. For it seeks to compensate with trivialized emotions what it sorely lacks in intellectual discourse, opting for high drama over cold reason.
So rather than reasoned arguments to disprove the charges against them, the accused resort to all means of (ir)rationalizations that comprise the body of Material Fallacies of Reasoning any student of my day learned in Philosophy 101…

Ad hominems and ad misericordiams, only the most familiar.

Yes. In the Philippine political praxis, as I am wont to write time and again, the visceral takes primacy, if not total monopoly, over the cerebral.

So, Torres shall now go the way invariably taken by Ombudsman-embroiled local officials – the due process of filing a motion for reconsideration of his suspension.

But there is the other, simpler way of just accepting the suspension, to just grin and bear it.  For one, it is but all of three short months. Better yet, it can even pay surprise dividends for Torres. Mayor, take heed.  

Heralded in Pampanga political lore – and invoked in at least three cases at the national level – is the so-called “Morales Doctrine” of holding fast and tight onto the mayorship, Constitutional provisions notwithstanding.

Named after its progenitor Marino “Boking” Morales who sat as Mabalacat City hizzoner from 1995 until his unseating in 2017 – all of 22 long years, the mandated nine-year three-term limit be damned.

How did he do it? Aside from the all-too-late Comelec decision in 2007 – coming close to the election period – of his defeat in 2004 (the years I am not so sure of, but the events did happen), it was his suspension from office – over the quarry scam – that he laid as ground for staying in office, circumventing the three-term limit by citing the gaps, the cuts in the continuity of his service record as mayor. That he effectively ceased as chief executive when he was declared loser – even if the declared winner, his perennial rival Anthony Dee, did not even have a second to occupy the mayorship – as well as when he served his suspension.

That it took until June 2017 for the Comelec to realize that Morales had overstayed proved the efficacy of the Boking doctrine.

There’s the template for you, Mayor Torres.