A bad idea

As for that leading power broker in the Philippines, the 800-pound gorilla known as the United States, it wasn’t exactly enthusiastic over Estrada. Estrada while senator had not only voted against a new treaty with the US that would have renewed the US lease on its military bases in Clark and Subic. He also campaigned against it to the extent of even making a movie chronicling the social ills the bases had spawned in the communities that surrounded them.

Estrada did try to make amends for that indiscretion by sending his future defense secretary off to Washington in 1997 to assure the Great White Father of his allegiance, but that didn’t wash, if only because the influence of certain academic leftists on Estrada was also fairly well known and a matter of distress in certain embassy circles.

Enter Chavit Singson, once one of Estrada’s closet chums. Singson blew the whistle on Estrada’s alleged jueteng kickbacks, even as the media released one expose after another on Estrada’s alleged hidden wealth, bank accounts, and false Statements of Assets and Liabilities.

Despite the efforts of his House allies, an impeachment complaint against Estrada sailed through that Chamber and found its way in the Senate for trial. A broad alliance of Church, civil society, militant groups, anti-Estrada politicians, with the support of the military, eventually removed Estrada from office, with the Supreme Court declaring his ouster legal because he had–duhhh–”constructively resigned.”

The unwonted ease with which Estrada was impeached, tried and eventually ousted–plus the haste with which the Supreme Court legalized his removal–should have forewarned us all that a conspiracy of various elite, Church military and foreign interests had come together to remove a president who had after all been lawfully elected, mostly by the poor.

But Estrada’s numerous failings had not only made it seem like a good idea at the time. It had also seemed like a step forward in the country’s political evolution. There were doubts about Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s principles–or lack of them–despite the sentiments of the moment. But wasn’t she educated where Estrada wasn’t, as well as more articulate?

No one except some of the conspirators, and not even those groups that had demanded that everyone from President down resign, seems to have anticipated that Arroyo would turn out to be worse than Estrada in terms of the immense corruption that has infested the entire bureaucracy and poisoned both the private and public spheres, the human rights violations that now rival the worst of the Marcos years, the official lawlessness and violence, and the sustained assault on the electoral system that has made a mockery of democratic choice.

All this explains why, six years after Estrada was ousted from office, practically every offense that he committed pales in comparison to the crimes the Arroyo regime has committed and is still committing. If Estrada was the disease and Arroyo the cure, the cure has proven worse than the disease.

But that’s to assume that Arroyo was indeed the cure. Apparently she wasn’t.

(This column originally appeared in BusinessWorld)