Being Estrada’d

The Arroyo administration was in short dragged scratching and screaming into arresting and charging Estrada. Once compelled to do so by the forces that had put it in power, it had to go through the motions, but kept its options open, and most probably tried to make some deal with Estrada, including offering him the option of exile instead of a trial.

As expected, the trial dragged on to impact on two political low points: the 2004 presidential elections and last May’s mid-term elections, in which Estrada and his trial inevitably became an issue.

The Estrada plunder case was in short political from the beginning in the sense that not only its legal virtues and infirmities were at issue; so were the political implications of Estrada’s being tried (he had to be removed from office first before that could happen) and of his being convicted or acquitted.

It’s been said so often it’s now conventional wisdom: Estrada HAD to be convicted. An acquittal would have at least implied that he had been illegitimately ousted, and that the Arroyo presidency, already locked in defending its legitimacy after 2004, has been illegal from the start.

But the Estrada case’s being political doesn’t mean that it didn’t have a sound basis to begin with. Political or not, the merits of the case seem to have been the bases for the Special Court’s finding Estrada guilty of collecting P545 million in “jueteng” pay-offs and a P189 million commission from stock market purchases using government funds.

Were it not for the context, the conviction would have been truly encouraging. Estrada is indeed a “big fish” in more ways than one, and the biggest so far caught by a law that penalizes the crime against the nation systematic corruption is. But take note that it happened without his being in power, and that his is only one case among others that are arguably much worse. There is, for example, the “Joc Joc” Bolante fertilizer scam, and the “Hello Garci” scandal, both of them election-related, and both of which involve hundreds of millions of state funds used as bribe money.

The Estrada conviction does provide a warning, no matter how feeble, that some of the laws of this country can actually be made to work. Provided, however, that the corrupt are sooner rather than later removed from office. That lesson, however, is easily interpreted as one more justification for holding on to power forever and ever, the better to avoid being estrada’d.