Amnesty: A balloon floated

FRONTLINE

Ninez Cacho-Olivares

08/17/2007

All the arguments, pro and con, centering on Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr.’s all-encompassing amnesty which was first floated to have detained President Joseph Estrada included in the proposal, again brings to fore the undeniable fact that the more than six years in detention have not reduced the deposed leader to a politically spent force.

But it was also clear that the inclusion of Estrada in the proposed amnesty measure by the Speaker was yet another trial balloon, meant for Malacañang to float, through staunch ally De Venecia, to gauge the sentiment of the Filipino people.

It was evident, given the constraints of an amnesty measure, that Estrada’s inclusion in the list was a square peg in a round hole. He is, after all, being tried for plunder, not for rebellion or any political crime, even if his is clearly a political case, and his only “political” crime was the fact that Estrada insisted on abiding by the Constitution and the rule of law and that he was not liked by the elite in society, who feared him as they believed that, as he prefers to give to the poor, he would attend to the needs of the poor to the detriment of the rich.

Estrada continues to be seen by a great number of Filipinos as a force to reckon with and, in the case of Gloria Arroyo, he still represents a serious political threat to her usurped presidency twice over.

In truth, Estrada already again proved his political strength in the ballot box during the last senatorial elections, having at least eight senatorial candidates he blessed win the polls. This was, of course, reduced to seven, after some magic was woven in Maguindanao by the Commission on Elections, to force through the victory of a Gloria candidate, now better known as the senator from Maguindanao.

There are of course the anti-Erap diehards, a lot of whom come from the so-called elite civil society, along with the Malacañang boys who refuse to acknowledge Estrada’s magic he continues to weave on the poor, or the masses. But by and large, even those so-called Edsa II elite groups that worked to depose him illegally have realized their mistake, even if they refuse to admit this publicly and continue to use several excuses in their attempts to explain their “change of heart” toward Estrada.

How, in the view of the Gloria regime, does one solve a political problem such as Estrada, given the fact that any move it makes against him may end up in a damned if she does, and damned if she doesn’t situation, with her being more damned if she does? With the plunder verdict forthcoming, the problem of Estrada again comes to clear focus and while the mood in Malacañang is said to be one of pushing strongly for his conviction by the Sandiganbayan, the Palace occupants also realize that this could lead to more political instability for the Gloria regime, and may even make Estrada an even stronger political force, since there is very little doubt that he is a victim of political injustice.

He was, after all, robbed of his mandate given him overwhelmingly by the Filipino people in 1998, to rule over the nation for the time the electorate had given him.

He followed the Constitution and the laws of the land to the letter, and even faced the Senate court for an impeachment trial. He played fair, but those who were greedy for power and position, and couldn’t wait their turn to attain power democratically, used foul means to achieve it.

Even as Estrada was deposed by a coup d’etat staged by the elite in society, he believed in the law and the Constitution, and fought for his right to stay on in the presidency in the highest courtroom of the land, yet even these justices played partisan politics, and threw out the window the Constitution and amending the provisions on how to go about vacancies created in the presidency, by ruling that Estrada had “constructively resigned” and on the basis of what the justices claimed was Grade A evidence: an unauthenicated diary of Estrada’s last hours in Malacañang, written by a third person, presented in court, not by either party — Arroyo or Estrada, but by the justices themselves and in news clips form yet.

Even the plunder charge was politically motivated, and would not even have come about if Estrada had bowed to the demand of Gloria for him to write a letter of resignation and leave the country for him to live in exile.

Political instability reigns under the Gloria regime, and the problem that is Estrada persists to this day, for Gloria.

With the verdict forthcoming, timed with talk of amnesty, Gloria and her allies must have realized that to this day, there appears to be no hope for her to unify the nation and move forward.

The problem she faced then, she faces still today.

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