The Yellow-leaning Social Weather Stations has an interesting study of public satisfaction ratings of five Philippine presidents of the last 30 years—Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, Fidel V. Ramos, Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III.
Benigno Aquino III had the highest satisfaction rating. The next highest is, surprise, Joseph Estrada.
In overall performance, BS Aquino had an average net satisfaction rating of +47, equivalent to good. Second best was Estrada, with +15. Both presidents nosed out Ramos +14, Cory Aquino +5, and Arroyo who had -2.
Between BS Aquino and Estrada, the latter has had a much longer and more awesome public service, 47 years, reckoned from the time he gained the mayorship of San Juan town in 1969.
BS Aquino had been in public office in only less than half that time, 21 years.
Estrada is the more experienced leader, and many now say, the better president. The veteran actor-turned-statesman had, after all, been mayor for 17 years, senator for six years, vice president for six years, and president for 30 months. His wife, the first lady Dr. Loi Ejercito became senator while he was incarcerated on politically motivated corruption charges. Two sons are senators—Jinggoy Estrada and JV Ejercito.
Estrada brings 47 years of savvy political management, incredible leadership, and enduring charisma to what he now calls his last hurrah—being mayor of the Philippines’ capital and premier city. His aim is to make Manila the No. 1 city in competitiveness and No. 1 as a place for doing business and for living in. That was achieved, back in 2015. Does that make Erap the best mayor? He demurs. He says the honor belongs to the legendary Arsenio H. Lacson, mayor from 1952 to 1962.
Estrada is now on his fourth year as mayor of Manila. During that time, he made the city “completely debt-free,” by paying P5.5 billion in city obligations. That fiscal balance is no mean a feat. When he took over in July 2013, Manila was bankrupt with no viable sources of revenue.
Erap’s strategy was simple enough—make the city an enviable place for doing business and a premium place for residence by focusing in infrastructure, education, public safety, anti-crime, health, and cultural revival. He also raised city property taxes, by an average of 60 percent.
The last measure, tax hike, made the city cash-rich. But it also made Estrada hugely unpopular, among the city’s propertied class and Chinese-Filipino businessmen who went for his longtime rival, Alfredo Lim. “It was a choice between letting Manila sink further into bankruptcy, and rescuing the city from certain disaster,” he winced.
Taxes almost cost Erap his reelection in May this year; he won by just 2,600 votes, instead of by a landslide as he did in 2013, when he had done nothing yet as mayor.
Estrada, however, is not one to run away from a challenge, no matter how humbling the consequences. “It’s called political will,” he says.
He demonstrated political will when he vowed to crush the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front with an all-out war. He did. His army captured 46 MILF camps, including Camp Abubakar. It was the first time the government had overrun the main MILF camp in troubled Mindanao. The feat angered the bishops and displeased the Americans. The bishops accused him of human rights violations. Washington sent the American secretary of defense who hand-carried the letter of President Clinton pleading with him to stop the all-out war. Erap refused. He even vowed that after crushing the MILF, he would break the backbone of the Communist Party. Having defeated the both the MILF and the NPA, he would have redeployed the 150,000-strong army—half for infrastructure building, the other half for agriculture, using free skilled but armed labor marching to the command of the commander-in-chief. It was an out-of-the-box formula for poverty alleviation.
However, by January 2001, a US-inspired military uprising, backed by the Catholic Church and civil society, had ousted Erap. After a few months, he was convicted, of plunder, for money which did not belong to the government and which he did not touch, because it was parked all the time in a scholarship fund for Muslims. The bishops later apologized for their mistake. So did President Cory Aquino, BS Aquino’s mother. “We are all humans to make mistake,” she said in public.
In May 2010, Estrada ran for president. He almost won, (he placed a decent No. 2 to BS Aquino), were it not for two things—the beloved Cory had died in August 2009; and Ka Erdie Manalo, the charismatic leader of the powerful Iglesia ni Cristo (which reckons with some three million voters) died, also in August 2009. INC had always supported Estrada’s electoral bids.
BS Aquino garnered 15-million votes in 2010; Estrada 9.8 million. If the three-million swing vote of INC had not shifted to Aquino and gone instead to Estrada, the latter would have won handily.
These days, Estrada’s mission, he says, is to bring back the old glory of Manila and to render the greatest good for the greatest number. It is a mission many no doubt he will accomplish.
Performance, after all, is the best legacy a politician or a statesman can leave his people and to keep him forever in his people’s heart — and their satisfaction.