Erap politics

They seem to have forgotten that Joseph Ejercito Estrada is a prisoner, held accountable for the heinous crime of plunder. He may not seem like it, nested comfortably in his own private resort in Tanay, but he is.

Because they have forgotten, the politicians associated with the Binay faction are constantly whining about "restrictions" that prevent the prisoner from campaigning actively for his flunkeys.

The other day, they took their whining a step further. They are asking the court to basically return the deposed president to his Greenhills home so that he may more actively participate in the electoral game in progress.

An alien, dropping in from Mars, would be thoroughly baffled by this particular aspect of the political theater now in progress.

It is bizarre enough that defeated coup plotters are filing candidacies from jail as a novel means to spring themselves from their predicament. It is even stranger that a bunch of politicians are seeking to spring an ousted and detained former president from jail by making him the de facto campaign manager of a beleaguered electoral effort.

Here, as everywhere else, politicians and criminals conveniently associate. But this is pushing things a little too obviously.

Once before, Filipinos introduced into the English language the word necropolitics.

This happened during that time when the Marcos family and their supporters were using the unburied corpse of the deposed dictator as leverage to pressure government to yield to their demands. The effort proved futile. But to this day, the corpse remains unburied and continues to function as a rallying point for loyalists who are somehow hoping for a second coming.

Now, the politicians of the Binay faction appear to be introducing a variant of necropolitics. Instead of a corpse, they are using a live relic from a political episode that saw our civic culture plumb new depths: when the presidential palace was transformed into a casino and hustlers from the underworld took control of a presidency.

There must be a method to this extremely obvious madness.

Although he has demonstrated the total lack of a work ethic, Joseph Ejercito Estrada retains some political functionality for that amoral band of politicians who rally around his name.

Despite repeated failures of statesmanship, Estrada as a piece of political fiction continues to fascinate a significant portion of the electorate. Fiction, as we know from literary criticism, is always more powerful than fact.

The powerful fiction of a "man of the masses" continues to enthrall many. Opinion polls show that the man who behaved irresponsibly while in power outscores the trust ratings of incumbents who must deal with real, complex responsibilities: keeping an entangled bureaucracy somehow working, straightening our knotted fiscal situation, ensuring sustainable economic development and maintaining national security in the age of terrorism.

The power of fiction lies in absolute simplification. That makes it more powerful than the convoluted world of facts.

But there is that inconvenient counter-theory: Erap’s respectable trust rating need not necessarily translate into votes for the candidates he endorses.

In a condition of crippling scarcity (of funds as well as ideas), however, the politicians of the Binay faction must continue to hold on the belief that Erap’s popularity might somehow rub off on their candidates.

Besides that, there is the matter of money. That is the other thing the politicians of the Binay faction keep whining about. Adel Tamano, their spokesman, takes every opportunity to remind us that they have no money.

Money, many suspect, is the reason Erap yanked out his son JV from the Binay faction’s senatorial slate. Money, I suspect, is the reason the politicians of that faction pleaded with JV to stay on as "interim campaign manager" despite his being totally inexperienced in running a nationwide campaign and even as he must prepare to mount his own reelection bid.

We are talking about Erap’s money, of course. The politicians of the Binay faction seem to hold to that desperate belief that their campaign effort will be funded from Erap’s mythical war chest. Such funding flows might finally enable this motley band of marginal politicians to campaign beyond a 100-kilometer radius of Metro Manila and even hold a proclamation rally.

While Team Unity has had its proclamation rally in Cebu, barnstormed Davao and Pampanga, the Binay faction has settled for a few motorcades in the metropolitan area, Bulacan and Rizal. The last we heard, the Binay faction has "tentatively" moved its proclamation rally from Makati to San Juan town. All that indicates is that Jojo Binay has shrewdly passed the bill for sponsoring this activity to JV.

It is easy to imagine all the fawning over Erap is animated as well by the desire that he fund the Binay faction’s campaign beyond the proclamation rally, whenever that might finally happen.

Lastly, there is the matter of keeping together an unwieldy alliance-of-convenience among politicians who dislike each other.

Tainted as his record of political leadership might be, Erap remains the only significant political personality who could provide semblance of a center-of-gravity to this motley band. All the other possible leadership personalities are either political midgets or even more disgraced than Erap is.