Erap: On with my candidacy

MANILA, Philippines - Former President Joseph Estrada said yesterday no amount of “trumped-up charges” against him would make him back down from his bid to return to the presidency in the elections next year.

Estrada denounced yesterday as “orchestrated” and “manufactured” the latest attempts to pin him down as the brains behind the killing of publicist Salvador “Bubby” Dacer, saying these were meant to derail his planned bid in the May 2010 presidential elections.

“I’m more determined now than ever. The masa won’t believe them,” Estrada told The STAR, referring to the masses whose cause he had championed in his political campaign slogan “Erap para sa Mahirap (Erap for the Poor).”

Estrada said he is still proceeding with his scheduled meeting next week with Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, the presidential candidate of the Liberal Party (LP), to discuss how opposition groups could join forces to prevent cheating in next year’s general elections.

“It will be a friendly fight. We’ll just talk about how we can guard against election fraud and cheating,” Estrada disclosed.

Aside from Aquino, Estrada is also set to sit down with the other non-administration presidential aspirants: Senators Manny Villar, Francis Escudero and Loren Legarda.

Estrada will be the standard bearer of the Partido ng Masang Pilipino (PMP), which he founded and is headed by Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile.

The former president has often said he will run if opposition parties will not agree to support a common candidate to face the administration bet.

Estrada said he is “99.9 percent” sure he  `would run even as he is now being implicated in the Dacer-Corbito double murder case.

Estrada deplored in particular allegations made against him by former police senior superintendent Glenn Dumlao aired in an interview on the ABS-CBN news program last Wednesday night.

In that interview, Dumlao directly implicated Estrada in the murder of Dacer and his driver Emmanuel Corbito in November 2000. The two were abducted and later killed and their bodies burned by elements of the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF). 

The PAOCTF at that time was headed by then Philippine National Police (PNP) chief Panfilo Lacson who, in a privilege speech at the Senate last Monday, also linked Estrada to the double murder case.

“Desperate na iyang si Ping, kaya naghahanap na ng damay siya (Ping’s desperate, that’s why he’s looking to implicate others),” Estrada rued, referring to Lacson.

According to Dumlao, someone higher up than Lacson ordered the murders of Dacer and Corbito.

“It’s very clear (that) Malacañang (gave the) order,” a tearful Dumlao said during the TV interview. When pressed to identify who in Malacañang, Dumlao replied: “Eh si Erap na yan (That will be Erap).”

Dumlao recalled his conversations with his colleague, former senior police superintendent Cezar Mancao II, when they conducted the operations against Dacer.

Dumlao stressed he was “morally convinced” that Estrada directed the Dacer murder to silence the publicist who he was made to believe was blackmailing the former president.

“Feel lang niya yun (That’s just what he feels),” Estrada fumed.

Estrada was visibly irked by Dumlao’s accusations, citing how the former subordinate of Lacson could have carelessly jumped to conclusions without any basis at all.

“They (Dumlao and Mancao) never received orders from me,” Estrada pointed out.

“I see it as all orchestrated, manufactured to destroy my image,” Estrada insisted.

Estrada believed that Dumlao and Mancao were now carrying out their respective deals with the administration after they were brought back to the country from the US where they were arrested and jailed for immigration and other offenses.

“When they (administration) got Mancao, he was pointing to Ping. But after a while, biglang nasama na ako (I was suddenly included),” Estrada said.

Since Dumlao and Mancao are now state witnesses being used by government prosecutors in the double murder case where Lacson is one of the accused, Estrada surmised that administration hands are behind this campaign to vilify him at this stage when he has been in the top five in mock presidential polls by various survey-takers.

Estrada though stressed he is not discouraged by these sinister plots to demonize him again before the eyes of the Filipino people to stop him from running again in the presidential race.

In the end, the deposed president said, the “truth shall prevail and the lies will be exposed.” Unlike his accusers, Estrada said he has never been tainted with such a heinous crime like killing people.

Already, Estrada cited, former ambassador the US Alberto del Rosario, an appointee of President Arroyo herself, issued a statement the other day that belied the allegations of Lacson in his privilege speech on the supposed coercion brought to bear upon ex-ambassador Alfonso Yuchengco to sell his family’s interest in the Philippine Long Distance and Telephone Co. (PLDT).

“I do not know him (Del Rosario). All I know about him is he is an appointee of Gloria,” Estrada said.

Del Rosario, in a statement, said that he did not participate in any “fictional” coercion to force the Yuchengcos to sell their PLDT shares to First Pacific owned by Manny Pangilinan.

Estrada filed the other day a libel suit against Yuchengco, who made the same claims against the deposed President in a biography of the former ambassador.

If he wins this libel case, Estrada said he would donate what he gets as damages to the victims of Yuchengco’s Pacific Plans, who up to now have gotten payments for their children’s tuition from the moribund pre-need firm.

In the meantime, Estrada revealed he would be leaving for London on Sept.26 to attend to the graduation of his daughter Jerica Ejercito by former starlet Laarni Enriquez. The 23-year-old Jerica finished economics in a London college.

Meanwhile, the Parents Enabling Parents (PEP) Coalition Inc., an organization of parents who bought open-ended education plans from Pacific Plans Inc., welcomed the plan of Estrada to donate funds to the planholders should he win the libel case he filed against Yuchengco and the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

“If he wins the libel case and he’s donating the money to us, why not? It would be a big help to thousands of our students,” PEP president Philipp Piccio told The STAR. With Zinnia dela Peña