The President went to Tor res’s wake on his way back to Manila after vacationing at the Presidential Mansion in Baguio City where he spent New Year’s Day.
Torres’s family informed the President that interment would be on Saturday, Jan. 9, in La Paz town, also in Tarlac. Torres’ family lives in Baltazar Subdivision in Paniqui, but she was born in La Paz.
Later in a statement, Coloma said “President Aquino went to the wake of former LTO Chief, Assistant Secretary Virginia Torres, to extend his sympathy and condolences to the family of a fellow public servant who had devoted more than three decades of her life to government service.”
The President’s mother, former Pres. Corazon Aquino was born in Paniqui in 1933.
His maternal grandparents, Jose Chichioco Cojuangco and Demetria “Metring” Sumulong had lived for years in the town.
Torres used to be the provincial head of LTO in Tarlac and was appointed as LTO chief nationwide soon after Aquino ascended to Malacanang in 2010. She was known as a shooting buddy of the President.
At Hacienda Luisita that used to be largely owned by the Cojuangco side of the President’s family, farm workers had identified Torres as working for the Cojuangcos in leasing back hacienda lands already distributed to them under the agrarian reform law. This was after Torres retired from the LTO amid a scandal triggered by a viral video showing her playing a slot machine in a casino.
