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10/28/2007
Plain citizen Joseph Ejercito Estrada.
That would be how Erap would prefer to be known, as he goes around
town for now, to savor the freedom denied him for the past
six-and-a-half years.
To say his life is a storybook is an
understatement.
A biography on him would be a best
seller, from being a college dropout, entering the glitzy world of
show business, pushed into politics and making good at it that he
never lost a single election.
He rose from being a local chief in San
Juan, was ousted as municipal mayor in 1986 after the Edsa revolt;
picked himself up and ran for a higher office, winning the position of
senator of the republic, served for six years, ran and was voted into
the vice presidency and then hitting the peak of political life as the
country’s elected leader, winning by the largest margin in the
country’s electoral history.
Along the way, he never found need for
the current brand of manipulative and transactional politics for the
simple reason that his strength was his popular support from the
people.
Carrying that rare shield of public
support for a politician, Erap did not need to compromise in the dirty
world of Philippine politics but it became a weak spot for him when he
was overwhelmingly elected to the presidency.
To Filipinos, he bared himself as he is:
an ordinary man with many weaknesses, which endeared him to many,
since they identified with him — something which the elite in society
wanted to get rid of, since his popularity and strength meant, to the
elite, that it was the poor, not the elite, that ruled in the world of
Philippine politics.
This popularity of Erap, still
undiminished despite being ousted, demonized, charged, detained and
convicted, as evidenced just recently with his gain of freedom, was,
however, a weak spot in the snake pit called Malacańang since the many
interests that separately own the corners of powers shun a president
who is immune from manipulation.
Thus, from the moment he announced his
presidential ambitions, institutions that claim the biggest stake in
the country such as big business, the church and those who believe
themselves to have the right to impose social mores on the people were
on his back, steadily attempting to destroy him.
These groups — with Catholic bishops in
the lead — launched a massive campaign called “Anybody but Erap”
during the 1998 elections and as proof of how rejected their views
were by the electorate, Estrada won with the largest vote ever for any
Philippine president.
These groups, however, did not end their
campaign when Estrada was already sitting in Malacańang. They schemed
and plotted all the way to Estrada’s impeachment and the supposed Edsa
II revolt, which was unmasked later as a naked military takeover led
by then Vice President Gloria Arroyo, greedy as she was for political
power that she couldn’t even wait for the people’s judgment of her as
a leader through the ballot. She, who was Vice President and an
Estrada Cabinet member, treacherously plotted a coup d’etat along with
her unprofessional military leaders, Catholic bishops, the Makati
businessmen, the Left whom she now denounces and even the rebel Moro
Islamic Liberation Front, to topple Estrada a full year before
mounting the coup against him. This means the time prior to the BW
Resources scandal and the jueteng scandal, and even the P130 million
in tobacco excise tax which a demonstrably corrupt governor claimed to
have been ordered diverted by Estrada in a “special operations.”
Is there any doubt that the charges of
plunder leveled against Estrada was not a frame-up to get Gloria’s
coup d’etat going?
Gloria saved herself from going through
the election process that she knew she would never win and got the
presidency in a silver platter from the plotters and the schemers that
ousted Estrada.
Six years hence, the Philippines has
garnered the distinction of being among the most corrupt countries and
the most dangerous place in the world under the administration of Mrs.
Arroyo.
Estrada, in turn, was behind bars
despite an aborted impeachment process and was charged with the crime
of plunder under a trial held during a regime that is forever trying
to justify its being.
He was released the other day when
Gloria is again hanging by the thread after being implicated as the
ringleader in another anomalous multimillion-dollar contract.
Erap said he would choose to live an
ordinary life away from the world of dirty politics after again
savoring freedom.
Who can blame him, after that bitter
six-year experience that many believe to have been unjustly imposed on
him.
Yet, the people have been crying to be
liberated from the same dirty politics from which he wanted to be
free.
For sure, he would not turn his back on
public clamor.
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