Senator Jinggoy Estrada has been barred from his Senate post for 90 days after the Sandiganbayan’s Second Division granted a preventive suspension in the graft case tied to the alleged flood control kickback racket.
The penalty flows from Section 13 of Republic Act No. 3019, the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, which compels the courts to remove an incumbent public officer from office for the duration once that official has been validly arraigned on a graft charge. The provision is not discretionary, and Estrada’s arraignment cleared the way for the order to take effect.
That arraignment took place on June 4 at the anti-graft court in Quezon City. Estrada declined to enter a plea on the graft charge, prompting the Second Division to register a not-guilty plea on his behalf. Presiding Justice Geraldine Faith Econg chairs the division.
The same hearing saw the court throw out Estrada’s bid to derail the case. The senator, through counsel, had filed an omnibus motion seeking to quash the information, dismiss the matter outright, and send the case back to the Ombudsman for reinvestigation. The justices rejected all three, ruling that his due-process arguments did not hold because he had already answered the Department of Justice’s findings through a counter-affidavit during the preliminary stage. With those obstacles removed, the court proceeded to arraignment and then opened the door to the suspension question, giving Estrada 10 days to argue against being sidelined.
The graft case before the Second Division centers on alleged anomalies in Department of Public Works and Highways projects and forms one strand of a wider prosecution. The Office of the Ombudsman, in charges filed on May 28, accused Estrada of pocketing more than P573 million in kickbacks linked to illegal budget insertions for flood control works funded under the 2025 national budget. Former DPWH Secretary Manuel Bonoan is his co-accused in the graft matter.
A separate and graver case sits with the Sandiganbayan’s Fifth Division, where Estrada faces a non-bailable plunder charge over the same alleged scheme, alongside Bonoan and three DPWH engineers. He has been held at the New Quezon City Jail in Payatas since June 1, when he surrendered following the issuance of the plunder warrant. He earlier posted P90,000 bail on the bailable graft count.
Estrada has rejected the accusations as baseless and has framed the prosecution as the cost of his political stances. He has said he intends to use every lawful avenue to clear his name, and his camp has continued to press procedural challenges before both divisions.
This is not the first time a graft prosecution has cost Estrada his Senate seat. He served a comparable suspension during the pork barrel proceedings of the previous decade, a case in which he spent roughly three years in detention before posting bail and securing an acquittal on plunder, though he was convicted of bribery.
