Erap: Disqualification case won’t prosper

MANILA, Philippines - Former President and now Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada said yesterday he is confident that a disqualification case filed by his predecessor Alfredo Lim before the Supreme Court (SC) will not prosper.

“I am confident that it will not prosper. The ruling of the Sandiganbayan best described that the disqualification case against me was a mere scrap of paper,” Estrada told The STAR.

He issued the statement following a piece by STAR columnist Federico Pascual, who wrote that the High Tribunal may soon rule on a petition seeking to remove Estrada as Manila mayor and bar him from ever running for public office.

Estrada said that aside from the Sandiganbayan, the Commission on Elections and the Manila regional trial court dismissed the disqualification case against him.

Estrada said Lim and his other detractors appear to be hopeless in their effort to remove him from his present post. He said Lim can dream on.

“Anyway, dreaming is for free. If dreaming is against the law, I would have ordered his arrest,” he said.

Pascual said the question revolves around the interpretation of the absolute pardon former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo granted to Estrada a month after the Sandiganbayan convicted him of plunder in September 2007.

Estrada maintained that Arroyo’s pardon returned his full civil and political rights, an argument that his lawyers made before the Supreme Court when his presidential candidacy in the 2010 presidential elections was questioned by his critics.