CHAPTER 1: CINDERELLA OF PHILIPPINE POLITICS

Erap Estrada enjoyed mass appeal throughout his political career.

I

n 1986, when massive streets protests drove Ferdinand E. Marcos away from Malacañang Palace, the official residence of the Philippine president, Chavit Singson was Provincial Governor of Ilocos Sur and Erap Estrada was Municipal Mayor of San Juan, Metro Manila. Both Chavit and Erap, who had been friends for close to two decades by then, swore to each other to remain in their respective posts when Cory Aquino, the “housewife” who succeeded Marcos as President, began swatting away the incumbent elective local officials, like political flies, throughout the country.

“They are freeloaders,” said Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel, Jr., the new Local Government Secretary of the Cory Aquino government, in reference to the “overstaying” officials.

“Hindi tayo bababa sa pwesto,” Erap assured Chavit over a glass of whiskey.

“Over my dead body, pare” Chavit replied.

After two weeks, Erap relinquished his post, and Chavit did the same after another two weeks. There was no bloodshed, either in San Juan or in Ilocos Sur.

Erap went on to become a Senator a year later. Chavit reclaimed his seat at the Ilocos Sur Provincial Capitol in 1988.

Erap’s election to the Philippine Senate in 1987 was eye-catching. He was the lone survivor among opposition senatorial candidates. None of his party mates could quite withstand the “Cory Magic” like he did. At that time Cory was so popular that, pundits chuckled, her endorsement could make even a dog win in an election.

In the Senate, Erap liked to trip Nene, a fellow neophyte senator, on the floor whenever there was an opportunity for it.

“Would the distinguished gentleman from San Juan yield to a few clarificatory questions?”

With that standard line, Nene opened his interpellation of Erap (sponsoring his pet Kalabaw Bill).

“With pleasure, Your Honor,” also a standard line. But Erap would add a novelty: “And thank you for removing me from my post in San Juan, my being jobless forced me to to run for the Senate.”

But being member of an exclusive 24-member club melted the icy-cold alibi of distance. Being senator had its feel-good effect. Lots of it. Probably good enough for one to see value in the other. In time Erap and Nene became mag-kumpadre and, from the looks of it, perhaps friends.  

“The President was kind enough to invite me as one of the sponsors in Jinggoy’s wedding,” Nene recalled. Jinggoy, Erap’s son with wife Loi and who would also rise to become senator, wed Precy Vitug in 1989. (Among Roman Catholic church members in the Philippines—who constitute around 80 percent of the population—being a sponsor in at least three of seven sacraments of the faith, such as marriage or matrimony, entitles one the privilege of being kumpadre (male) or kumadre (female) of the parents receiving the sacrament.)

“I returned the compliment when Koko,” Nene’s son, and now also a senator, “wed Jewel Lobaton, a former Miss Binibining Pilipinas Universe titleholder, in January 2000 with Erap as principal sponsor,” Nene said.

When Erap became president, media played up an anecdote about Nene’s “No ID, No Entry” experience at the Palace. The senator was subjected to a rigid security check by the presidential guards. Nene felt slighted by the treatment. “But except for that small incident,” he said, “I have no complaints about the President.”

Erap explained that in his administration, the rules equally applied to everybody, whether they were messengers or senators. After all he promised in his inaugural speech that friendship and kinship would not influence his official functions. Getting through the palace gates had never been easy—something which Erap highlighted in his plunder trial 4 years later to bring home the point that jueteng collectors could not just freely see him in office, much less deliver to him bundles upon bundles of jueteng money. Of course, after a while, the members of the so-called “Midnight Cabinet” who freely roamed the palace grounds at nighttime would also become public knowledge.

But let’s not move too fast. Let’s get back to when his political star was still on the rise.   

It was easy to say Erap had his own political magic. Adored by the Filipino masses, the lone oppositionist in the Senate had likewise attracted allies from outside the supposedly “dumb masa”—as former Supreme Court Justice Isagani Cruz called it—social class. One of them was colleague Orly Mercado, another Cory-backed senator. Together, they quietly started plotting Erap’s way to the top. An emerging two-member political party got around to casting and re-casting its tentative shapes.

The Erap-Orly political semen eventually sired the birth of Partido ng Masang Pilipino, or PMP.

In 1990, the PMP had 2 members. In 1991, it had 21 members. In 1992, it bagged the second highest office in the Philippines.

Fielding Erap as candidate for Vice President in that year’s national elections, the PMP rose to become a socio-political magnet and its lead character having earned the tag of “Cinderalla of Philippine politics,” as a Philippine newspaper editorial put it. He won the vice presidency. He was on his way to the top.

Eddie Ramos—FVR to many—Cory’s trusted Armed Forces Chief of Staff and later National Defense Secretary, succeeded her at the throne.

Like many of those who comprised the “schooled” segment of Philippine population, Eddie was not fond of Erap, but both being choices of the electorate, FVR had to co-exist with the Vice President. He proceeded to create a customized office for Erap.

And so it happened that, from 1992 to 1997, Erap was Chairman of the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC). Erap came to be known as anti-crime czar. He found lots of action in the job and relished it, although he hardly showed the same level of enthusiasm when it was time to break down issues of national interest.

In a letter to Philippine Daily Inquirer editors, Nick Lagustan, then FVR’s spokesman, said: “Vice President Estrada attended most of the (cabinet) meetings, even if he habitually left the Cabinet Room well before adjournment, leaving his chief of staff, Robert Aventajado, to take notes.”

From the image he developed in the movies as champion of the oppressed and refuge of the downtrodden, Erap seamlessly transitioned to being the real deal, one who was on top of restoring order in the crime-infested streets of Manila.

And, as in the movies, this role needed a supporting cast.

At PACC, Erap put together an elite team of law enforcers led by now senator Panfilo “Ping” Lacson. Referred to by his band of operatives as “71”—being a member, along with fellow senator Gringo Honasan, of class 1971 of the Philippine Military Academy, Ping had a solid account of his work in the field.

He had been a Philippine National Police (PNP) Provincial Director since 1988 (with stints in the provinces of Isabela, Cebu and a few months in Laguna). “I gladly accepted the offer to join PACC since I was not happy anyway with my Laguna assignment,” Ping said in a 2009 speech delivered on the Senate floor.

Nevertheless, the urge to look good had put the life and limb of otherwise innocent by-standers at risk. Barely a month in their posts, PACCmen murdered Elmer and Jeffrey Pueda, Luis Matro and Leonardo Montalvo, according to a congressional report.

Three months later, PACCmen—having bungled a rescue attempt involving two kidnap victims (scions of wealthy Filipino-Chinese families) in which Galicia gang members, the suspected kidnappers, killed the victims, and pressed to make amends with the shocked and hurt Filipino-Chinese community—hunted down in Batangas the perpetrators, only to bungle it one more time when they tagged the wrong man, erroneously killing Wilfredo Aala, an overseas contract worker.

PACC also matched the methods of criminals. If the Galicia gang could kill two youngsters to get what they wanted, PACCmen—and specifically Ping—could cause the death of a mother and her child to force innocent people to reveal information, if Jinggoy and Kit Mateo, one of Ping’s former aides, were to be believed.

In 2009, Jinggoy released a video of the bed-consigned Kit Mateo—gasping with his last few breaths—in which he said (and as reported by ABS CBN News.com) that “Lacson … ordered the murders of a … woman and her 8-year-old daughter by throwing them out of a helicopter, which was flying near Corregidor Island. He said the two were relatives of then Red Scorpion Gang leader Joey de Leon and were killed after they refused to tell Lacson the whereabouts of de Leon.”

In 1995 PACC figured in a major controversy. Its operatives gunned down 11 suspected criminals in what official records said was a “shootout.” Subsequent investigations, however, including the one conducted by the Philippine Senate, have raised the possibility that the casualties were victims of “rubout” rather than shootout.

Despite suspicions that PACC was taking shortcuts in dealing with suspected criminals, Ping became the new darling of a crime-weary public, especially when his operatives killed Joey de Leon, the reported leader of the dreaded and notorious Red Scorpion gang. This bandit reportedly victimized with alarming regularity wealthy Filipino Chinese businessmen.

No wonder Ping would soon be the toast of the Chinese community in the Philippines. His boss, Erap, the Vice President, basked in the limelight even more.

Although Erap, as crime-czar, had been criminally charged for the death of a number of people, some of which were PACC’s victims of either mistaken identity or summary executions, people in general did not care. For one, he was too popular to be trashed by public opinion. For another, Ping and his PACCmen were seen, as one gang leaders fell one after the other, as putting their lives on the line in the service of peace and order. And still for another, the criminal cases against Erap were settled out of court as soon as they were filed, using, in some instances, private funds.

Erap ran away with the win as Presidential candidate in the 1998 elections. He received 43 percent of the total vote. Up to that point, no other presidential candidate has enjoyed such an overwhelming mandate.