Pinoys now miss daily Estrada trial

With the abrupt, unexpected end of the best soap opera in town last Jan. 16, people are now going through withdrawal symptoms when they can no longer tune in on the impeachment trial at 2 in the afternoon.

They just have to make do with the old soaps.

Catalina Leis, a 64-year-old mother of nine from Antipolo City, said she would sometimes skip cooking dinner and would just buy canned goods whenever the trial got so exciting.

Leis would watch the trial with the other old women in the neighborhood, so that now they can’t help but reminisce about those good old days when they were glued in front of the television set.

"I miss Your Honor, (Chief) Justice Hilario Davide Jr.," one woman in her early 20s told The STAR. "I love Your Honor!" chorused the same woman, joined by another.

The others can now only savor how Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago would "snap" and articulate her arguments in machine-gun manner.

"Nakaka-miss yung kapraningan niya (I miss her craziness)," a housewife in her mid-30s said. "We lost something to laugh about every afternoon. And don’t forget the dance number of Sen. (Tessie Aquino) Oreta," she added.

Oreta, it will be recalled, did her "dance of joy" soon after she and 10 other senators voted against opening the second Equitable PCI Bank envelope which trial prosecutors said contained evidence that could have led to the conviction of now ousted President Joseph Estrada.

Other sidelights they remember are the mispronunciation of the letters of the alphabet by lawyers and witnesses, the fashion sense of the female senator-judges, and the court room dialogue and other legal gobbledygook.

"The Fortun brothers also ... crush ko si Raymund. Pero gusto kong kiluhin si Sen. Ramon Revilla (I have a crush on Raymond, but I want to put Revilla on the weighing scales)," another female kibitzer said.

Revilla had contended that it was physically impossible for jueteng whistleblower Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis Singson to carry P130 million because, as per the senator’s weighing scales for fighting cocks, he knew that the amount was too heavy for one person.

Most of all, there was unanimous agreement that Erap text jokes would be missed.

At the "Bulong Pulungan" media forum the other day, Sen. Loren Legarda-Leviste acknowledged the role that media played in the change of leadership in the country after a peaceful people’s uprising.

"Media help mold the values of people... Because of media, people are more vigilant and politically educated now," she said.

Leviste, a former broadcast journalist, pointed out the comprehensive radio, TV and newspaper coverage of the impeachment trial from Dec. 7 to Jan. 16 helped trigger the public’s outrage at any curtailment of the truth.

The deposed president had been criticizing the press for being abusive, and kept telling foreign investors not to believe everything media were reporting.

Leviste also said information technology likewise played a potent role in educating the people, such as cell phone texting and e-mail.

"We have to attribute the success of EDSA II to multisectoral groups that have been moving and coordinating with the people so they would join the calls for a new leadership," Leviste said.

She explained this was done swiftly and spontaneously because of high technology. And how did people get to the EDSA Shrine really fast despite the traffic?

Why the Metro Rail Transit, of course, whose tickets bear the face of the ousted leader everybody loved to hate.