Jinggoy Estrada: Pork scam won’t affect Senate comeback

Former Sen. Jinggoy Estrada has expressed confidence that his pending trial in connection with the pork barrel scam would not prevent him from staging a political comeback.

After all, he said, he had won a Senate seat in 2004—at 10th place—even as he was facing a different plunder case involving his father, resigned President Joseph Estrada.

“There’s no [effect]. If you remember, when I first ran in 2004, I still had an outstanding case… I had a plunder case in 2004 and eventually, I was acquitted,” Estrada told reporters on the sidelines of his plunder trial for the P183.8-million pork barrel scam before the Sandiganbayan on Monday.

The antigraft court acquitted Estrada in September 2007 while convicting his father for plunder. The elder Estrada walked free weeks later, thanks to then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s pardon.

‘I haven’t decided yet’

While Estrada said “I haven’t decided yet” if he would run again for senator in 2019, he said he was already “going around the country to thank the people for their unwavering support.”

Even as he remained coy about a Senate candidacy, Estrada was quick to rule out the possibility of running for mayor of San Juan City: “That’s not true. Purely rumors.”

Asked if this meant his half-brother, Sen. Joseph Victor Ejercito, would have to give way and run for the local post instead, Estrada said: “I haven’t talked with him.”

Only one of the brothers

Ejercito, whom the Sandiganbayan had already acquitted of graft and technical malversation over the alleged misuse of calamity funds to buy P2.1-million guns, said in a recent television interview that “only one [of the half-brothers] should run” for senator.

While the half-brothers have been publicly at odds, the political dynasty was able to put up a united front in the local arena: Ejercito’s mother, Guia Gomez and Estrada’s daughter, Janella Ejercito, ran as a tandem and won as San Juan mayor and vice mayor.