Jinggoy seeks end to bail hearings

DETAINED Sen. Jinggoy Estrada yesterday urged the prosecution to bring its presentation of evidence against him to a close, arguing that his petition for probationary liberty in the Sandiganbayan was “already ripe for resolution.”

A year after he and fellow opposition Senators Bong Revilla and Juan Ponce Enrile were indicted for plunder and graft over the P10-billion pork barrel scam, Estrada said prosecutors from the Office of the Ombudsman had still failed to show strong proof of guilt against him.

Estrada, who had been locked up at Camp Crame since he was arrested in June last year, reminded the prosecution that bail hearings should be “summary in nature.”

“(T)he prosecution (has) already availed plenty of time to present its case,” the detained senator said in a statement. “One long year has passed and the prosecutors have neither presented nor proven strong evidence of guilt against me.”

“I think that is enough time for them to argue their case and I believe they failed to substantiate their theory against me. All they had presented before the court are hearsay testimony and speculation from the so-called whistleblowers which do not have probative value,” he added.

Estrada said the government’s primary witnesses against him had previously admitted in open court that “they have no personal knowledge” about the alleged kickbacks he purportedly received from suspected pork barrel scam mastermind Janet Lim-Napoles.

The senator is facing trial in the antigraft court for allegedly pocketing P184 million of his Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) allotments which he supposedly funneled through the fake foundations set up by Napoles.

He insisted that the irregularities attributed to him “did not ever happen and there is absolutely no shred of truth to their allegations.”