A poll body official has signaled that Senator Jinggoy Estrada’s path to the 2028 national elections remains open, even with the lawmaker now in custody over a plunder case tied to the flood control corruption controversy.
Commission on Elections Chairman George Garcia, speaking in an interview on Tuesday, June 2, 2026, framed the question of disqualification around a single legal threshold: a conviction that has reached finality. Anything short of that, he indicated, leaves a candidate’s right to seek office intact.
The standard Comelec applies
Garcia pointed to the type and severity of conviction that the law treats as disqualifying. “Hangga’t ang isang tao ay hindi convicted by final judgment involving a crime na punishable by more than one year, siya ay makakatakbo,” he said.
That standard, by his account, is not triggered by an unfavorable ruling at the trial level. Garcia was explicit that a penalty handed down by a lower court does not, on its own, bar someone from the ballot. “Kung ito po ay conviction lang ng mababang korte, hindi po yan kadahilanan upang hindi makatakbo ang isang tao,” he said.
The distinction matters because it leaves room for appeal. Under the standard Garcia described, a candidate facing a lower-court sentence can still elevate the matter to higher courts, and the disqualification clock effectively does not start until the judgment can no longer be challenged.
A senator already behind bars
The eligibility question is far from academic. Estrada was taken into custody on Monday, June 1, after the Sandiganbayan’s Fifth Division ordered his arrest in connection with alleged kickbacks exceeding P573 million linked to Department of Public Works and Highways infrastructure and flood control projects under the 2025 fiscal-year budget. The anti-graft court set no bail, as plunder carries no right to provisional liberty when the evidence of guilt is deemed strong.
Estrada was not the only one named. The warrant also covered former DPWH chief Manuel Bonoan and three engineering officials — Denryl Caesar Cortuna, Manny Bulusan, and Arturo Gonzales Jr. — over their alleged roles in the scheme.
The plunder warrant followed an earlier graft case before the Sandiganbayan’s Second Division, in which Estrada and Bonoan had posted P90,000 bail days earlier. The senator was elected to his current term in 2022, a mandate that, under the Comelec’s reading, keeps a re-election bid viable so long as no final judgment intervenes.
Why a prior verdict doesn’t close the door
Garcia’s interpretation aligns with how Estrada’s legal history has already played out. The senator was convicted of bribery by the Sandiganbayan in connection with the pork barrel scam, but portions of that conviction were later reversed by the same court, and he was acquitted in the related plunder charge. Cases that remain open to reversal or appeal, in other words, have not historically stripped him of his standing — the precise scenario Garcia describes as preserving a candidate’s right to run.
