MANILA, Philippines -- President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo could no longer undo the alleged corruption that attended her nine-year administration but her best exit strategy would be honest and peaceful and orderly elections in May, former President Joseph Estrada said on occasion of the Lenten break and her approaching 63rd birthday.

“Perhaps, all I can say is that, overall, she no longer has a chance to overturn the corruption committed under her administration,” Estrada told reporters covering his campaign to return to Malacañang.

“The last she can do to leave a legacy is to see to it that there’d be an honest, clean and orderly election. That’s all she can do so she can be remembered by our countrymen,” he added.

Estrada, nonetheless, asked Ms Arroyo to adhere to the rule of law by refraining from making midnight appointments in the last days of her administration.

He said the President should make life for Filipinos better towards the end of her term.

“I hope that she will be enlightened and follow the rule of law like her father, like what her father did during the time when his father did not recognize the midnight appointees made by the outgoing president, Carlos P. Garcia,” Estrada said.

Estrada was referring to the time when in 1961, then newly elected President Diosdado Macapagal nullified Garcia’s more than 300 so-called midnight appointments.

“I hope that amid the graft and corruption, while many suffer from poverty, I hope that in her last 60 days in office, she would do a token act for the economic welfare of our countrymen,” Estrada said.

“I hope she’d no longer cause more confusion,” he added.

Re-electionist Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, Estrada’s son and the Senate President Pro Tempore, said Ms Arroyo should spend her last days as chief executive assuring the people that she’d step down from power on June 30.

“(She should) make use of her last months in office helping the people truthfully and tell the people that she’ll leave her post on June 30 so that we will no longer have any doubt that she wants to prolong her stay in office,” Jinggoy Estrada said.

He, however, said that might be difficult, considering the President’s candidacy for Congress.

“But she’ll never really leave because she’d be congresswoman,” Jinggoy Estrada said referring to Ms Arroyo running for Congress in her home province with her opponents having little chance against her.