The long-planned memoir of deposed President Joseph Estrada will apparently end with a twist, a reversal of roles, an ironic denouement no different from the way the former actor tailored his old action flicks.
Its final chapter, if it were to be written now, could even have a cinematic title: “Poetic Justice,” which sounds like a revenge thriller, or perhaps the more melodramatic “Hindi Natutulog Ang Diyos (God Never Sleeps).”
These were the phrases the 74-year-old Estrada actually used to sum up how he viewed the fate befalling his political archenemy and successor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
In a statement sent to the Inquirer on Saturday, Estrada said he had decided to “postpone” the release of his autobiography, supposedly scheduled for this month, in order “to include the arrest” of Arroyo on Nov. 18.
“My vindication continues, so we cannot yet close the book,” he said. “The ending was supposed to be in the 2010 [presidential] election, when I got the same number of votes as I got in 1998. That was complete vindication for me.”
He added: “Eh meron pa palang susunod na kabanata (But it looks like a new chapter is unfolding).”
In September 2007, Estrada was found guilty by the Sandiganbayan antigraft court of pocketing hundreds of millions of pesos in illegal gambling payola and commissions from stock market trading. But he was spared from life imprisonment by an Arroyo pardon a month later.
Then came the irony: Accused of electoral sabotage, Arroyo, now a representative of Pampanga, has been ordered by Judge Jesus Mupas of Pasay City Regional Trial Court Branch 112 to be detained in the same government hospital suite where Estrada and his son Jinggoy were held in the early phase of their six-year plunder trial under her administration.
Two-thirds complete
In an interview with the Inquirer on Thursday, Estrada said that the book was two-thirds complete and that it would focus on his presidency as cut short by what he called “the conspiracy of the elite,” purportedly involving the Church, civil society, a clique of generals and businessmen, and Arroyo and her husband Jose Miguel “Mike” Arroyo.
Asked then whether he would devote a chapter or a postscript to Arroyo’s prosecution, he said: “More or less, isasama ‘yun (it will be included).”
“Definitely,” he later said.
“It’s poetic justice. Hindi talaga natutulog ang panginoong Diyos,” he said when asked how he would describe Arroyo’s fortunes. “With this memoir I hope to get vindication.”
Estrada has been talking about writing his memoir since 2008, a year after his conviction. He mentioned the project again during a visit to the Inquirer office in July.
According to him, the actual writing only started early in 2011 because “I got so busy recovering my losses”—a reference to family ventures, mainly in real estate.
The yet untitled book has now become a weekly preoccupation. “I’m computer-literate,” he said, apparently to dispel any notion that he was leaving everything up to ghost writers.
As initially planned, the book’s scope will be limited to his political career. “Because if we include the life and loves of Erap, it might take several volumes,” he said, referring to himself by his nickname, and alluding to a colorful past that includes fathering children by a number of women, hard boozing and a show-biz lifestyle, and even incorporating these as part of his roguish charms on the campaign trail.
The former movie star’s pompadour may have sagged with age but not his tough-guy charisma, which is seemingly undiminished by his real-life criminal record, and which even helped him bag an impressive second-place finish (9.5 million votes) in last year’s presidential race.
Inside story
Estrada said he would back his narrative with official documents to recount “how the so-called civil society and the Church conspired against me,” referring to his impeachment and eventual ouster through a people power uprising in January 2001.
These may be old hat to those who have closely followed his saga. After all, at least five books—by critical and sympathetic authors—have since been written about him, aside from the “video documentaries” produced by his media staff.
But Estrada hinted at a little-known inside story—a teaser, so to speak—which may just heighten the buzz over the upcoming book, the first to carry his byline.
He revealed that apart from being offered safe passage to any foreign country of his choice by the then newly installed Arroyo administration, he was also offered a plane by the US government should he decide to go into exile.
He said the offer was “indirectly” made through columnist Jose Manuel “Babe” Romualdez, who had friends in the US Embassy.
A member of Estrada’s media group said the former President had rarely talked in the open about this purported offer of transport from the US Embassy, which, if he had accepted, would have made his fate parallel to that of another toppled Philippine leader, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
Hours from being besieged by an angry mob at the climax of the first People Power Revolution in 1986, Marcos, his family and cronies were airlifted from Malacañang by US Navy helicopters then based in Clark, Pampanga. They next boarded a C-130 plane to Guam and later to Hawaii.
In media interviews and speeches, Estrada often maintained that he had refused offers for him to leave the country after he was driven from power.
Which country for exile?
He said the offers were made by Arroyo’s first justice secretary, Hernando Perez, during two meetings at the Forbes Park home of the late socialite-businesswoman Chito Madrigal-Collantes.
But in exchange for safe exit from criminal prosecution, “the condition was that I should resign as President in writing,” he said.
During Estrada’s visit to this newspaper’s office in July, Inquirer president Sandy Prieto-Romualdez asked him which foreign country would he have chosen had he agreed to go into exile.
The man, sipping red wine and smiling at the memory, replied: “Spain.”
It was one of the countries that Arroyo had avowedly intended to visit before the warrant for her arrest dashed her plans.
First posted 1:07 am | Sunday, December 4th, 2011