Chief broker

From all indications, former president Joseph Estrada stands as the main broker behind the FPJ candidacy.

And so it was that, after he declared his candidacy, Sen. Panfilo Lacson motored to Tanay, where Estrada is detained. It is unclear if he stays in his detention cottage or hold court in his plush estate near the camp.

Lacson, according to reports, sought the blessings of the former president – and was denied. That was to be expected. Joseph Estrada was the first one to broach the idea of FPJ running. Estrada, most likely, was the most persuasive voice urging the reclusive FPJ to seek the highest post – more persuasive than the voices of Edgardo Angara and Tito Sotto combined.

Senator Loren Legarda, aspiring to be vice president (in tandem with anybody, it seems, who will abet her ambition), made the pilgrimage to Tanay as well. She wants Estrada’s support to be FPJ’s running mate. FPJ, it was reported, wanted Katrina Legrada to be his vice-presidential candidate.

Loren, we will recall, was staunchly anti-Estrada during the impeachment crisis of 2000-2001. That might not make her the most loved among the Estrada loyalists now congregating around the candidacy of FPJ. At any rate, in the jaded pragmatism that governs electoral alliances in these parts, her best card is her high popularity rating, a virtue scarce among the other politicians in the Estrada camp.

It is not clear if Loren was able to charm her way to Estrada’s good side and win his endorsement. The other Legarda, the tough-minded and straight-talking lawyer Katrina, has been a long-time friend of the detained former president, a senatorial candidate on the same ticket when Estrada ran for vice-president. She could give distant cousin Loren a run for the money in securing the coveted second post on the FPJ ticket.

Estrada, too, seems to be influential in bringing in his old guard to the FPJ senatorial ticket. Juan Ponce Enrile, John Osmeña, Miriam Santiago and Tessie Oreta have all, at some point, seemed to be on the brink of political extinction. Now, with Estrada’s help, they truly threaten to remain walking the political stage into the near future.

Because of this, the FPJ ticket is quickly transforming into some sort of reunion of the pro-Estrada politicians.

This characteristic will run at odds with the elements of the FPJ packaging being assembled by the movie actor’s other handlers. They want to present the movie star as a candidate of unity, an element undermined by the re-grouping of the old political blocs that have been locked in acrimonious confrontations. They want to present the movie star as a non-politician, an element undermined by the horde of fading power-brokers clustered around the principal bet.

The opposition is quickly reconsolidating around its essential feature, its defining characteristic: the populist politics cobbled by vested interests represented by the presidency of Joseph Estrada.

In which case, this election becomes a referendum on the Estrada presidency. This election is the means for the Estrada bloc to march back to power.

And then it is also arguable that the Estrada presidency is nothing but a brief resurrection of the political bloc of the late Ferdinand Marcos. This was a presidency largely installed by the community of Marcos cronies and political dependents.

Ferdinand Marcos, when he imposed a dictatorship upon us, packaged the act as a "rebellion of the poor." The Estrada presidency was packaged on the theme "Erap para sa Mahirap." The FPJ presidential run is likewise being packaged as some sort of spontaneous political combustion of the economically and politically disenfranchised.

But beneath the populist demagoguery, the politicization of poverty, the real political and ideological core of all three political phenomena is a network of vested interests and political operators that twice before used power to distort the economy through protected monopolies and impoverished our people not only through plunder but also through the closure of opportunities.

Should this political block regain their grip on power, the Edsa Revolution and Edsa Dos will both have been for naught.

The emergence of Joseph Estrada as the chief broker of the political alliance that calls itself the "opposition" is probably unavoidable. The rest of the group are shriveled and discredited politicians or fading stars that failed to match their previous popularity with some degree of competence.

None of them can effectively arbitrate the many lines of conflicting interests, personality clashes and contending ambitions that mar the camp that calls itself the "opposition." Like the Godfather of Mafia lore, Estrada plays the role of giving the final word. Without him, that camp might quickly unravel under the weight of mutually destructive infighting.

Having stepped into the role of Godfather, Estrada must now be prepared to help finance this effort. This is a campaign that has yet to figure out how to finance itself.

Many of the Tsinoy wheeler-dealers who supported the Estrada campaign in 1998 have been supporting the now-beleaguered Lacson campaign. Taipan Lucio Tan is said to be financing the Raul Roco campaign. Eduardo Cojuangco, meanwhile, has wisely opted out of this contest and most of his party members have joined the PGMA bandwagon.

As the bills begin piling up, the politicians congregating around FPJ will expect Estrada to shoulder much of the pump-priming to get this campaign going. That will be both critical and substantial in the next few days. Christmas is not exactly a benign season for wooing votes.

There are only wild estimates of how much money Estrada has and how much money he will be able to direct to support his proxy candidate. At any rate, those who allow him to call the shots in a political network threatened by disarray obviously expect major financing forthcoming from the detained former president.

The financing expectations will be painful for Estrada. The expectation of what he will be able to generate for his favored candidate will always be larger than what he will be able to deliver.

Unless and until some major financing becomes evident, few regional and provincial power-brokers will be willing to hitch their own campaigns to the FPJ bandwagon regardless of the popularity levels of the principal candidates. In the present scheme of things, the presidential campaign is expected to help defray the minor campaigns of local allies.

Much as FPJ might wish to present himself as a "non-traditional politician", the realities of campaign financing will have to be dealt with. This is the level by which Estrada and his friends will take control of this candidacy – and eventually dictate the utterance of Poe.