(by Tony Lopez) More than 100 trips to 360 towns and cities in 60 provinces in less than two years. By plane, by helicopter, by boat and by land. No one has been to more places, held more protests and meetings, spoken in more universities, delivered more speeches, met more local officials, seen more people and pressed more flesh in so short a time. Yet, Joseph Ejercito “Erap” Estrada is not even a declared candidate for any office—yet.
“Neither [Senator] Many Villar nor [Senator] Chiz Escudero has covered not even a third of the territory we have been to nor the number of people we have met,” reckons former Sen. Ernesto Maceda, Estrada’s de facto executive secretary for his sorties. Villar and Escudero, per surveys, are Estrada’s main rivals for 2010.
In Iloilo next week, Estrada was scheduled to visit nine towns in two days. Four mayors called up his Greenhills, San Juan residence to inquire why their towns were not in his itinerary. “This shows you the interest of people in Erap, considering that Iloilo is supposed to be Mar Roxas and Frank Drilon country,” smiles Maceda.
In Cebu, the former president has made five visits and covered all its congressional districts. Cebu is administration or Gloria Arroyo country. Erap, per surveys, is weakest in Cebu, among so-called presidentiables. Yet, he was mobbed by local officials and Cebuanos. His political machinery on the island, which is booming economically, is well-oiled and working well.
In the 2004 presidential election, the main opposition candidate, actor and Erap buddy, Fernando Poe Jr., was clobbered by Arroyo by a margin of eight to one in Cebu. Yet, overall, nationwide, the fight was close and the outcome would have been different if not for the fraud. Arroyo, the incumbent, got 13.9 million votes (39.99 percent), just 1.12 million votes more than FPJ’s 11.78 million votes (36.51 percent). Her 3.48 percent margin is the smallest in the history of Philippine presidential elections. Her Lakas CMD party got just 79 of the 235 district congressional seats.
Erap—his screen name and political nickname—says he is stumping the length and breadth of the archipelago to say thank you to the people who had stood by him and never wavered in their support during his six years and six months of incarceration after his conviction for plunder by a special three-person court created specifically to try him.
Estrada says he will run only if the opposition is not united. Judging by the previous presidential elections, since the abolition of the two-party system, the opposition is usually not united. Since 1992, the presidency has always been contested by no less than five opposition claimants against a single perceived administration or status quo candidate. Estrada thrives best in such a scenario.
In 1992, seven vied for the presidency. Retired general and People Power 1 hero Fidel V. Ramos won with a 23.58-percent plurality, just a slim 3.86-percent margin over the second placer, Miriam Santiago’s 19.72 percent. In 1998, when Erap won. He garnered 40 percent (10.72 million votes) of the vote in a nine-way presidential fight. His chief rival, former Speaker Jose de Venecia, was a poor second, with 15.58 percent (4.26 million votes).
It seems inevitable Erap will throw his hat into the ring in 2010.
Surveys indicate he is now No. 1 among the aspirants. This is the effect of three factors—his lingering popularity and masa appeal, his hundreds of provincial sorties, and what Maceda calls “the sympathy vote,” the Filipino’s love for the underdog, for one who had been a victim of injustice, having been unceremoniously ousted from the presidency in January 2001, only to be succeeded by someone who later acquired the image being even more corrupt (than Erap) and as dictatorial as Ferdinand Marcos was.
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