The 69-year-old Estrada called up The STAR yesterday and said he would go on a "hunger strike" to dramatize his opposition to the efforts of the Arroyo administration to amend the 1987 Constitution.
"So I will fight it out, come what may," Estrada told The STAR, adding, "Bahala na ako, kahit patayin nila ako." ("It is up to me. Even if they kill me.")
"Kahit na maghu-hunger strike ako. Ang taba ko kasi ngayon. Mapipilitan ako pumayat," Estrada wisecracked. ("Even if I go on a hunger strike. I’m quite overweight now. I will be forced to lose weight.")
Estrada admitted he is again overweight after gaining as much as 12 pounds over the past few weeks. He blamed it on the fresh foods he has been eating at his sprawling 16-hectare rest house in Tanay, where he has reinvented himself as a farmer – raising fruits and vegetables, hogs and poultry. He also has a "fishing village," where he grows tilapia and hito (catfish).
Levity aside, Estrada recalled that the late opposition leader Sen. Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. staged a hunger strike to highlight his struggle against the tyranny during the Marcos regime.
"As Ninoy said ‘The Filipinos are worth dying for,’ I say ‘The Filipino masses are worth dying for’!" Estrada said.
Still the acknowledged opposition leader, Estrada remains immensely popular with the Filipino masses even as he remains in detention in his Tanay rest house while undergoing trial for plunder at the Sandiganbayan.
"Because it is the masa who made me, first, as an actor, then as San Juan mayor, later as senator, until I was elected Vice President and President of the Republic until the tyrannical allies of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo grabbed power from me," Estrada deplored.
Estrada vowed he would not allow the alleged continuing tyranny of the majority to dominate the country as represented by the allies of the Arroyo administration, who, he noted, rammed through Congress the constituent assembly (con-ass) amid attempts by the minority opposition to block it.
"If we do not move now and do something about this, we will be better known as a nation of cowards. And this the Filipino people will not allow. And this, I will never allow," Estrada said in a statement he issued a day after the administration-controlled Congress approved the House Resolution to convene the con-ass starting next week.
He sternly warned pro-Cha-cha congressmen against their political maneuvers to push con-ass and announced he would be calling on the Filipino "masa" (masses) to go out to the streets to stop this planned "rape" of the country’s 1987 Constitution.
He condemned the congressional rush to approve the con-ass, bypassing the Senate. Estrada’s wife and son, Senators Loi Ejercito and Jinggoy Estrada, respectively, both signed the Senate resolution opposing the House resolution on con-ass.
"Again, this regime refuses to heed the voice of the people, the majority of whom are against Charter changes, as shown by the recent surveys. Again, these so-called representatives of the people refuse to heed the voice of their constituents and with indecent haste, try to force through Charter change to benefit themselves, and for them to be in power and control forever," Estrada said.
"With every breath I have, I will fight this unconscionable rape of our Constitution and the murder of our democracy and freedoms," Estrada vowed.
A disgusted Estrada lamented the country’s democracy was being "slowly murdered" by the majority in the House of Representatives while the masa, including, he said, the millions of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), are going to be deprived of their right to directly vote for their President. - With Delon Porcalla