Erap’s UK-schooled daughter eases into Manila limelight

IN DAD’S FOOTSTEPS. Jerika Ejercito heads Ilaw, a City Hall-based advocacy group created by her father, Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada, who in a recent Ilaw event gamely joined her in a dance number. FROM ILAW FACEBOOK PAGE

The daughter also rises at City Hall.

Jerika Ejercito, Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada’s child with former actress Laarni Enriquez, currently heads Initiatives for Life and Actions of Women (Ilaw) ng Maynila, a program created by her father last year.

True enough, seeing the London-educated Jerika work the grassroots in Tondo, press the flesh in San Andres and ease into the kind of role taken by many a political scion makes daddy light up with pride.

“He gives me free rein to make decisions for Ilaw. We have a special relationship, but work is work. I consider it a privilege to work for him. I don’t abuse the daughter card,” told the Inquirer in an interview on Saturday.

As Ilaw director, the 30-year-old Ejercito works mainly with professors from the city-run Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila to conduct seminars in the barangays on Republic Act No. 9262 or the Anti-Violence Against Women and their Children Act of 2004.

“In a perfect world, there should be one VAWC (violence against women and children) desk in every barangay hall,” said Ejercito, who maintained that she and her team work as volunteers.

Yet few villages actually have this mechanism to address such cases despite having a Gender and Development (GAD) fund, which under the law should be five percent of a barangay’s total annual budget, she said.

“We’re trying to educate people because they don’t know how to utilize [the fund],” said Ejercito. “While some barangays do have VAWC desks, most of them either just ignore the GAD fund or use it for other things like office supplies. We can’t blame them, though.”

She said the seminars were also geared toward training barangay officials and female residents on how to properly operate the desks. The desk officers will be given an allowance drawn from the GAD fund, she added.

Jerika Ejercito.

Ilaw is also working closely with Manila Police District and Manila Department of Social Welfare since abuse cases reported to barangay VAWC desks are endorsed either to social workers or the police.

Ilaw holds office on the fourth floor of City Hall and on Manga Avenue in Sta. Mesa.

While her team’s current focus is to create awareness and ensure the implementation of RA 9262, Ejercito said her dream was for the city to eventually have a protective shelter exclusively for abused women and children.

While she is actively campaigning for Mayor Estrada’s reelection, she stressed that “when I was asked to head Ilaw, my only condition was I wanted to create a program that would be of substance and that would go beyond 2016 or my father’s term—a program that would bring [about] change with substance.”

Ejercito also heads a nongovernment organization called Be Healed Foundation, which focuses on women’s mental health.

Post-Edsa 2 ‘depression’

She said she put up the foundation four years ago after going through a bout of depression herself as a teenager, and again when she moved back to the Philippines from the United Kingdom.

Ejercito said her battle with depression initially started when she was around 15 or 16 and still living in the Philippines, and her father who was then President was mired in corruption scandals. (Estrada was impeached in November 2000 and ousted in a People Power revolt two months later. Detained and tried for plunder, he was convicted in 2007 but later received presidential pardon. He made a successful political comeback by winning the mayoralty in Manila in 2013.)

“Our family was placed under so much public scrutiny, I had to stop going to school because I was being bullied. Just the thought of the whole country against my father [was enough to get me down],” Ejercito recalled. “I remember attending Mass one time, and the priest was inviting everyone to join Edsa II. I resented it, the politics.”

To avoid all the drama, Ejercito said, her parents decided to move her to the United Kingdom where she completed high school in Cobham Hall Boarding School in Kent. She finished her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at American InterContinental University and her master’s in Marketing at Westminster University, both in London.

After nine years, when her parents brought her back to the Philippines, Ejercito said her depression resurfaced. “I think I held that grudge against the country the whole time I was in London. I [still] had that resentment against politics. But my parents wanted me back.”

After seeking professional help and with the birth of her son with actor Bernard Palanca, now 1-year-old Isaiah Joseph, Ejercito said she began to bounce back. Through Be Healed Foundation and now Ilaw, “I’ve found meaning in what I am trying to do. Helping these women is also me helping myself.”

Ejercito is also president and chief executive officer of Ejercito Inc., which, based on the Securities and Exchange Commission website, runs restaurants Maria Maria Restorante and Grub Shackk.

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