A holding cell at the New Quezon City Jail Male Dormitory in Payatas already stands reserved for Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, even as the Sandiganbayan has not yet ordered his arrest in a non-bailable plunder case.
The confirmation came from Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla, who said the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology—the agency overseeing the facility—has space set aside for the senator. “Yes, we are prepared,” Remulla said in a Viber message, according to One News PH.
The plunder charge against Estrada centers on more than P573 million in alleged kickbacks tied to multiple flood control projects. Jurisdiction sits with the anti-graft court’s Fifth Division, which has so far withheld any warrant.
Remulla has named the Payatas jail as the designated detention site for everyone accused in the widening flood control scandal. Whether Estrada ends up there, however, rests with the Sandiganbayan, the secretary said. Should the court issue a commitment order directing him to the facility, Remulla noted there is sufficient room to take him in. He added that any question of whether Estrada would be housed alongside former senator Ramon Revilla Jr. would fall to the jail warden’s discretion.
The dormitory currently holds roughly 3,600 detainees. Among them is Revilla, taken into custody last January on graft and malversation allegations linked to a P92.8-million flood control project in Pandi, Bulacan.
Estrada’s legal exposure is not limited to the plunder matter. On Friday he put up P90,000 in bail in a separate graft case before the court’s Second Division, which he shares with former Public Works secretary Manuel Bonoan.
Separately, pressure has begun mounting inside the Senate itself. Former Senate president Franklin Drilon urged the chamber’s leaders to remove senators under criminal scrutiny from their posts as vice chairmen of the Blue Ribbon committee, the body that leads the Senate’s anti-corruption work. He framed the move as an urgent internal cleanup, timed ahead of the committee’s flood control inquiry set to resume tomorrow, and warned that leaving the panel as currently composed risks eroding public confidence in the institution.
Both co-vice chairmen of that committee—Estrada and Sen. Rodante Marcoleta—are answering criminal allegations. Marcoleta is under Ombudsman investigation for possible plunder, indirect bribery, and a violation of Presidential Decree 46, which bars public officials from accepting gifts.
To Drilon, allowing either man to keep a leadership role on panels meant to scrutinize government corruption would be indefensible. “How can you believe that the investigation is serious when the very vice chair is involved?” he told radio dwIZ.
