AFTER dismissing his entire legal team two weeks ago, former President Joseph Estrada, who is undergoing a trial for corruption, proclaimed that the whole justice system was biased against him and that he wouldn’t be able to get a fair trial.
This is clearly a new tactic being used by Estrada. Since he is losing in the court of law, he is using his last trump card, the court of public opinion. After sacking his legal team, Estrada instructed them not to hand over any documents to government appointed lawyers. By throwing a monkey wrench into the whole legal process, Estrada gained a chance to ratchet up his accusations of being treated unfairly by the justice system.
Estrada’s wife, Sen. Loi Ejercito Estrada, jumped into the fray on Tuesday by using a privilege speech in the Senate to accuse the Supreme Court judges of being biased against her husband. She used as proof, of all things, a new book on the Edsa II revolution by Estrada critic Armando Doronila. In his book, Doronila claims that all the Supreme Court judges who were in Manila on Jan. 21, 2001, assembled at Edsa along with the anti-Estrada rallyists. This act is supposed to prove how much they allegedly “hate” Estrada (of course for no plausible reason, in the minds of the Estrada camp), and show why the former president could never be treated fairly by them.
The Estrada camp has now called for the resignation of Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide, and of Justices Artemio Panganiban and Antonio Carpio. They also want the abolition of the special court created especially for Estrada’s four criminal cases. These are Estrada’s conditions, per se, for him to continue playing ball with the government.
Along with these accusations is the implied threat of Estrada loyalists taking to the streets to demonstrate against the government and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Administration officials have been, unfortunately, biting the bait by confessing that they were scared stiff that any new anti-government demonstrations, like the May Day riot of last year, would severely destabilize both the government and the economy.
Although it is true that serious disturbances would badly affect the Philippine economy, I hardly think it would be put into a tailspin. For that to happen, civil unrest would have to be extremely violent and sustained for several days. I just don’t see that happening in the Philippines of today.
Although President Arroyo has been admirably consistent in how she has dealt with Estrada in terms of his corruption trial, I can’t help but feel that the Estrada camp may have uncovered some corruption involving administration supporters and is attempting to blackmail the government to drop the cases against the former president.
If this is so, the Arroyo administration should seize the high ground and announce it is dealing severely with the corruption case, and that it will punish anyone involved. This would take back the initiative from Estrada and leave that side bereft of anything with which to hold the administration hostage with.
The government should certainly not give in to the Estrada demands, as the former president is hardly in the moral position to be demanding such things. First it was for supposed health reasons that Estrada was moved from his dreary prison-house in Laguna to the military hospital in Quezon City, where he has been ensconced ever since. Then it was his insistence that he needed medical treatment in the US. Now it’s the justices and courts that must be changed. What next?!
The Philippines is being judged favorably around the world as a mature democratic country that has the courage to oust a president after overwhelming evidence was produced of massive corruption. If the country falters now in dispensing justice, because of threats from the Estrada camp, the Philippines will never live down a reputation of being just another corrupt and laughable banana republic. Let’s not let this happen.
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Where have the Love Buses gone?
I WAS WATCHING a Pinoy movie the other day on the Cinema One channel, Pati Pader Gigibain Ko!, starring Philip Salvador and Rosanna Roces, when a scene suddenly appeared in which Salvador and Roces were battling it out with the bad guys in the middle of a Love Bus depot somewhere in the MetroManila area.
For those of you who haven’t seen the movie, it’s about a straight arrow cop, played by Salvador, who takes on the vile corruption of Sen. Madrigal, played by Eddie Guttierez. Roces appears as a beggar disguised as a nun, who joins forces with Salvador. Elizabeth Oropesa plays a crusading senator, with a striking similarity to Sen. Loren Legarda.
In any event, the sight of the rusting hulks of hundreds of Love Buses, cannibalized for their spare parts, brought back memories of how much I had enjoyed riding Love Buses from Makati to Quezon City during the early 1990s.
Today, the Love Buses have vanished from the streets of Metro-Manila.
Originally given to the Philippines by Japan in the 1970s as a form of foreign aid, these second-hand buses were painted that distinctive shade of blue with the words “Love Bus” painted on the side in red letters inside a yellow heart. The brainchild of former first lady Imelda Marcos, the Love Bus theme was a good example of 1970s grooviness.
Obviously these buses, which were already second-hand when they arrived in the Philippines in the mid-1970s, have outlived their usefulness and are thus stashed away in that bus depot somewhere in the metropolis. It’s just too bad that that someone didn’t have the initiative to continue the idea with newer buses.
Coming back to the movie, Sen. Madrigal looks like a spitting image of former President Joseph Estrada, and in the climactic final scene in the Senate gets his fingers blown off by Salvador when he attempts to take Roces hostage.
How Madrigal or Salvador are able to get so many weapons into the Senate is never explained, I guess we viewers are supposed to suspend our disbelief, but let’s just hope that in real life this is impossible!
