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While Manila Mayor Erap Estrada celebrated the Supreme Court’s dismissal of the disqualification case filed against him, his son, Senator Jinggoy Estrada, didn’t fare so well.
“The Supreme Court (SC) has just junked two petitions filed by the detained senator against the Office of Ombudsman in connection with his plunder case involving the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) scam for lack of merit,” reports Ina Reformina on ABS-CBNnews.com.
The SC voted 9-5, with Associate Justice Francis Jardeleza inhibiting.
The report noted: “The High Court junked Estrada’s pleas that questioned the preliminary investigation conducted by the anti-graft office, and its subsequent finding of probable cause to indict him before the Sandiganbayan.”
The report explained that “Estrada had claimed that he was deprived of due process by the Ombudsman and was not provided the complete set of the evidence against him presented by complainant National Bureau of Investigation (NBI).”
Then again, Estrada failed to convince the court to vote in his favor. The SC magistrates instead upheld the Ombudsman.
SC spokesman Theodore Te said that Estrada “failed to prove that his right to due process and equal protection had been violated.”
Estrada is accused of funneling his pork barrel funds into fake NGOs set up by businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles. He was detained at Camp Crame in June last year.
Photo: Sen. Jinggoy Estrada’s Facebook page
