In the week of his 80th birthday, Joseph “Erap” Ejercito Estrada did things he does best and loves to do.
In the morning of April 19, a Wednesday, he inaugurated the Quinta public market in Hidalgo, Manila. The now upscale Quinta cost P150 million to redevelop, complete with air-conditioned toilets, an elevated parking, a ferry terminal and a fish port by the river.
In the evening, the mayor-president hosted a glittering four-course dinner of sea bass and steak for family, friends, and followers at the Manila Hotel that lasted until 4 in the morning the next day.
On Friday, April 21, he cut the ribbon to open the elegant Winford hotel-casino on what used to be Manila’s San Lazaro race track, together with tycoon Alfonso “Boy” Reyno, Pagcor chairman Andrea Domingo, and anti-graft prosecutor Ombudsman Conchita Carpio- Morales.
Erap shunned a sumptuous Friday lunch at Winford catered by expensive Choi Garden at Winford in favor of a hands-only lunch with the barangay officials and the poor of fifth district Manila in an alley on Pedro Gil street. There, the mayor was in his elements partaking of freshly cooked rice, fish, laing, and crispy lechon. Some of the residents took turns stealing selfie shots and airing their problems. One barangay official wanted her son promoted on the spot. To which Erap snapped, “approved without thinking!”
At Wednesday’s birthday dinner bash, the 1,000 guests were led by President Rodrigo Roa Duterte and members of his cabinet led by Executive Secretary Medialdea.
Estrada managed to bring together to share a meal on a single table three presidents of the Philippines—Duterte, former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and himself.
Among the by-invitation only dinner guests were Estrada’s former political enemies—and former political allies.
Also present were former vice president Jejomar Binay (2010-2016), former first lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos, former speaker Jose de Venecia and his wife Gina, former Senate president Juan Ponce Enrile, former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. and his wife, Liza Araneta Marcos, and Senators Richard Gordon, Loren Legarda, and Manny Pacquiao.
In the first senatorial elections in 1987 after the 1986 People Power, only two opposition candidates, Erap and Enrile, survived the Cory Aquino juggernaut.
Long-time Makati Mayor Binay was Estrada’s running mate when the former president sought reelection in 2010. Binay won as VP but Estrada lost, to Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III. Binay was later defeated by Duterte in the May 2016 presidential elections. Bongbong Marcos ran in 2016 for president but lost by a hairline margin to Leni Robredo. De Venecia was trounced by Estrada for the presidency in the 1998 presidential elections.
Absent was former President Fidel V. Ramos (1992-1998), who called Estrada to say he had a previous commitment.
Former President Aquino III (2010-2016) was not invited. As president, Aquino had maneuvered to charge Estrada’s popular actor-senator son, Jinggoy Estrada, to be arrested and jailed (until now) on charges of plunder, a nonbailable crime.
Former senator Jinggoy was given a four-hour furlough by the anti-graft court to be present at his father’s party. He sang two emotional songs for dad and joined his 10 other siblings (by different mothers) for a chorus to greet their father.
Estrada said Jinggoy’s presence at his party is one of the best gifts he received on his 80th birthday. He expressed hope truth would prevail in Jinggoy’s case.
Now on his second term as Manila mayor, Estrada served briefly as chief executive, 30 months (June 30, 1998 to January 20, 2001), despite being elected with the most number of votes then (10.7-million votes) cast for a winning presidential candidate, and the biggest electoral margin (6.46 million) over his nearest opponent, then speaker De Venecia.
In 2001, then vice president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo led a church-backed US-inspired military coup to oust the popular but anti-American Estada amid allegations of corruption. Then Ilocos Sur Governor Luis “Chavit” Singson made allegations that then President Estrada received illegal payoffs from (jueteng) gambling lords, prompting what became known as Edsa Dos, an orchestrated People Power.
In April 2001, Estrada was accused of plunder and arrested. Plunder being nonbailable, he was jailed while on trial, from 2001 to September 2007 when he was convicted by the anti-graft court Sandigan which Estrada described as kangaroo court and which Harvard-educated lawyer Rene Saguisag, one of Estrada’s defense lawyers, sneered at as being “programmed to convict. We never had a chance.”
On Oct. 25, 2007, President Arroyo granted Estrada full and unconditional pardon and restoring his civil and political rights. He was free after six years and eight months of incarceration.
In May 2010, Estrada ran for president, placing second to Noynoy Aquino whose victory was boosted by his mother dying in August 2009 triggering an emotional backlash in his favor, and the change in leadership and shift in loyalty of the powerful Iglesia ni Cristo which had always supported Erap’s electoral battles.
Aquino got 15.28-million votes; Estrada 9.487 million. Erap notes that the INC had three-million votes, plus the bandwagon effect. If 3.0 million were deducted from Aquino’s 15.28 million and added to Erap’s 9.487, the former would end up with just 12.2-million votes and Estrada would win with 12.487-million votes.
In the May 2013 local elections, Estrada ran for mayor and won handily in Manila. He sought reelection in May 2016 and won by a slim margin after four former Manila mayors ganged up on him —Alfredo Lim, Lito Atienza, Mel Lopez, and the family of Ramon Bagatsing.
“Being Manila mayor is my last hurrah and my last great performance,” says the former actor who initially became rich by appearing in 200 movies and becoming a Hall of Famer, both as five-time Best Actor and five-time Best Producer, mostly by playing the role of the underrated and the downtrodden.
Erap then bankrolled his movie popularity into one of the most amazing careers in Philippine politics.
These days, the mayor and former president is guided, he says, by a passage in the Lord’s Prayer, which he recites daily—“forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”