President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday refrained from talking about Senator Jinggoy Estrada, who was released on bail by the Sandiganbayan.
“No,” Duterte said, waving his hand and appearing disinterested. “Ask the Sandiganbayan, it’s not my territory.”
Incarcerated Senator Leila de Lima earlier branded Estrada’s release from detention as the height of the Duterte administration’s “trademark impunity,” as she raised doubts over the Sandiganbayan Fifth Division’s decision to grant Estrada’s petition for bail, an appeal the division junked last year under a different set of judges.
“Is the judiciary now introducing new procedure and doctrines just to accommodate the whims of the President?” De Lima said in a statement.
“After a previous bail denial on the ground that the evidence against Estrada is strong, a reconstituted Sandiganbayan division with Duterte appointees suddenly finds cause to set Estrada free not because they now find the evidence weak, but because the court thinks that Estrada is not a flight risk,” she added.
Estrada, who was accused of plunder and 11 counts of graft and corruption, was released from the Philippine National Police Custodial Center after posting a P1.3-million bail on Saturday.