Royal pain

You have to hand it to Joseph Estrada. Unable to finish even half of his six-year term, detained without bail, an eye and a knee bugging him, the deposed president still hasn’t lost his sense of humor – or his eye for women. Asked to comment about the latest effort of Ate Glo to out-Erap Erap with her "I need you" TV spiel, Erap gave a vintage reply: "Seductive!"

At his best Erap is a lovable imp, a loyal friend, guileless, carefree, generous. No wonder I know some people who will always be by his side as his friends, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, in sickness or in health, in or out of Malacañang. They continue to keep him company regularly in his despondency.

Too bad Erap didn’t stick with just those friends. He should have stayed away from smooth operators like Chavit Singson. He should have stayed away from people with a habit of keeping files of derogatory information about him – on paper, videotape, photographs.

At his worst he’s a self-centered libertine, a user of women and his adoring masses for his short-sighted ends. If he had any vision at all for his country during his incumbency, the vision was as impaired as his physical one. Erap has not aged gracefully, and he has come to symbolize everything that’s wrong with this country. I have many complaints against the Arroyo administration, but every time Erap acts up I immediately count my blessings and thank the heavens that he’s out of Malacañang.

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This being the Lenten season, let’s look at the world according to Erap. He’s thrown a monkey wrench into the judicial system, and he’s enjoying every minute of it. The guy basks in public attention, after many months of being "ksp" or kulang sa pansin, ignored by a nation eager to move on.

Does he think he’s guilty? Who knows what Erap’s concept is of right and wrong? Watching him, listening to him, I get the impression that he actually believes he’s innocent. Not so much because he doesn’t know the law, but because he thinks he simply did what everyone else was doing. He can’t stand having someone like Singson as a principal witness against him.

Even more galling for Erap is being charged with an offense that he says does not involve public funds. I don’t know what Singson has to say about the tobacco excise taxes. But as far as the Jose Velarde account is concerned, Erap insists to anyone who would listen that he isn’t the owner and the multimillion-peso bank deposit isn’t public money.

Also, there are bigger cases that clearly involve public funds, such as the Centennial Expo scam and the PEA-Amari deal, Erap says over and over. Why hasn’t anyone been charged with plunder? Why, he moans, is he the only one held without bail?

The litany of woes is endless: Why was his son Jinggoy denied bail by the Supreme Court? (Actually, there was no denial; the court simply returned the bail petition to the Sandiganbayan.) Why was a special court created to speed up his case? I don’t know why an innocent man would complain about a speedy trial, but that’s Erap for you.

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He knows how to milk his masa for sympathy, and he knows how to make this administration squirm. His wife, former first lady Loi, said it succinctly: Erap isn’t going into exile, he’ll just stick around and be the administration’s biggest pain in the ass. That’s more fun than Stateside knee replacement surgery.

And the administration, haunted by ghosts of May Day 2001, is in a quandary, wondering whether it should uphold the law and strengthen the justice system or opt for political expediency.

As of yesterday President GMA was still publicly belligerent, vowing "full retribution" if Erap continued his attacks on the government and the judiciary. Sometimes her big mouth can rival Erap’s. Maybe she was touchy over reports that Erap had snubbed her. When she’s cranky the meek "I need you" GMA disappears and the real one emerges, the one who declares: "I should not expect the people, especially my critics as well as fence-sitters, to grasp the objective of what I am tying to accomplish, because the time and timing is determined by God."

Full retribution or not, my guess is President GMA will wait for May 1 before deciding what to do with the royal pain in the ass. Can Erap still summon his multitudes? Without the Iglesia ni Cristo and El Shaddai, he’s left with the People’s Movement Against Poverty.

If the much-vaunted show of force fails to materialize and May 1 passes with a big yawn, the trial will continue, whether or not Erap’s original lawyers return. One day he’ll be convicted, but he’s likely to be pardoned, whoever is ensconced at Malacañang.