“A TRIUMPH in the fight against jueteng.”

This was how Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz, chair of the Krusada ng Bayan Laban sa Jueteng (People’s Crusade Against Jueteng), described the plunder conviction of former President Joseph Estrada.

“(The guilty sentence) is an omen that jueteng is a curse Jueteng undermines not only moral and social values but it also has political implications such as destroying democratic processes,” said Cruz.

A major issue in the plunder case hurled against Estrada involves jueteng payola.

He maintained that elections, be it on the national, local to barangay elections, are regularly influenced by campaign funds laundered from jueteng and illegal drugs.

“It (verdict) sends the right message that you can’t just do your thing and go scot-free,” Cruz, who led protest actions in this city against Estrada during his incumbency, said.

Cruz, also a critic of President Gloria Arroyo, said there is also a bigger implication of the sentence than to Estrada’s own personality, more specifically to the present administration “which can’t claim that it is exactly clean”.

“Think about it. If a President was sentenced of reclusion perpetua, that’s already one. And it’s not remote that we will have another one,” he said.

The prelate added he had anticipated the verdict would be guilty as he had earlier stated in his online blog, where he said, “some will be denied, some will be upheld”.

The Sandiganbayan’s special division sentenced Estrada to reclusion perpetua, or 40 years of imprisonment, for plunder involving P545 million in payoffs from jueteng lords and another P189.7 million in commissions from the purchase of Belle Corp. shares by the Government Service Insurance System.

“Corruption will never succeed. There is an end to everything,” he said in an interview with The PUNCH.

FOREWARNING

Cruz is also optimistic that the conviction will serve as a forewarning to the present administration which is steeped in similar pending controversial issues as the ‘Hello Garci’ tape, the $330-million national broadband deal recently entered into by the Commission on Election, the $466-million cyber education project, the P728 million fertilizer scam, and the bribe money allegedly received by Justice Secretary Hernani Perez for a power project. #

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