Jinggoy criminal conviction a watershed, historic in building a real rule of law

[Lee]

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THE conviction for bribery last Friday of Sen. Jose "Jinggoy" Estrada by the Sandiganbayan's 5th Division is a watershed in the history of our nation's efforts to build its rule of law, in which nobody, not the politically or economically powerful, is above the law.

The decision gives us much hope that even in this land ruled by oligarchs, the long arm of the law — at least sometimes — reaches the criminal, no matter how powerful he is.

Jinggoy would now be the highest official convicted of a major crime — after his father, the ousted president, Joseph "Erap" Estrada, that is, who was convicted of plunder on Sept. 12, 2007, but who subsequently was given executive clemency a month after.

 

Read the Sandiganbayan's 396-page decision (accessible at the Sandiganbayan website), which was based on over 300 witnesses' testimonies and on, by my estimation, over 100,000 pieces of documents, and you'd agree with me that there is no way Estrada can have his conviction reversed through an appeal to that anti-graft special court or to the Supreme Court.

Reading the decision, the Sandiganbayan even had very high standards for proof of guilt of the charges.

Estrada is finished, kaput. Hell will have to freeze over before he can escape prison.

His 86-year-old father Joseph — from whom he has drawn all of his political power — has lost all of his political influence to reverse his conviction. ("Erap" Estrada was sentenced to reclusión perpetua under a charge of plunder for the embezzlement of $80 million from the government but was later granted a pardon by the president and his former deputy, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.)

Bold

The nation owes a lot to the three bold justices who made the decision: the division's chairman, Fael R. Lagos, and its two associate justices, Maria Theresa Mendoza-Arcega and Maryan E. Corpus-Mañalac. Their decision is in contrast to the Sandiganbayan 1st Division's acquittal by a split vote of 3 to 2 in July 2021 of Sen. Ramon "Bong" Revilla Jr. for his involvement in the same pork-barrel scam, in which prosecutors presented very similar arguments and evidence used in the Estrada case.

Scam

The scam involved 28 legislators' receiving hundreds of millions of pesos in kickbacks for directing their pork barrel allocations (officially called the Priority Development Assistance Fund) to non-existent projects set up by Napoles, who has been in jail since 2013 and has since been convicted of the crime of plunder in three cases involving the scam. Estrada was charged for pocketing P183 million in such pork-barrel funds, for his role in getting government agencies to fund "ghost" projects.

 

Read more.

https://www.manilatimes.net/2024/01/22/opinion/columns/jinggoy-criminal-conviction-a-watershed-historic-in-building-a-real-rule-of-law/1929125

[JJReyes]

Funny.  Since I no longer closely follow Philippine politics, my first reaction is asking myself, "Is this senator in the opposition?" No one would dare go after someone close to an administration.