Turning 76 on Friday, former President and now Manila mayoral candidate Joseph Estrada reached back into his show biz roots to come up with a new description of the city which he said needs to be rescued from the “claws” of urban decay.
Estrada, a former movie star, said the city had become as dark as the one depicted in “Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag (Manila in the Claws of Light),” an acclaimed 1975 film directed by the late Lino Brocka.
Based on the novel by Edgardo Reyes, the film tells of a man’s tragic search for his hometown sweetheart that led him to the seedy side of the city
“I will save the city from further deterioration from its darkness, I will do my best to stop the poverty, hunger, corruption and criminality that have prevailed here,” said Estrada, who is running to unseat the reelectionist Alfredo Lim, 83.
“We will bring back the beauty and cleanliness which I had known as a child when my father, Emilio Ejercito, served as its city engineer,” he added.
He said the best gift he could have for his birthday would be a landslide victory for him and for the 12 senatorial candidates he supports under the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA).
The Lim-Estrada rivalry is one of the most watched contests in next month’s elections, pitting an equally grizzled politician and former police chief against a kingpin who remains a crowd-drawer despite his disgraceful ouster from Malacañang in 2001 and conviction for plunder six years later.
According to his media staff, Estrada will mark his birthday with a Mass this afternoon at St. Joseph’s Church in Gagalangin, Tondo, to be officiated by his spiritual adviser, Father Larry Faraon.
He and his local party mates well later hold a rally at Moriones in Manila’s Tondo district.