Estrada pardon weakens Arroyo’s opposition in Philippines
By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: October 28, 2007
MANILA: For a man who sought and received a presidential pardon less
than two months after being sentenced to prison for corruption, Joseph
Estrada, the former Philippine president, has displayed a remarkable
lack of contrition.
“I believe that history will vindicate not only this executive act
but my innocence as well,” Estrada declared Friday after his release
from house arrest. On the same day, looking ebullient as ever before a
throng of supporters, the former movie star thanked President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo for granting him executive clemency, referring to her,
for the first time since his ouster in 2001, as “President Arroyo.”
Estrada, who after six years on trial was convicted last month of
illegally amassing millions of dollars while president from 1998 to
2001, has always maintained that he did nothing wrong while in office.
Critics have bristled at the pardon; another former president, Fidel
Ramos, went so far as to call it a “terrible calamity.” Estrada,
critics say, must be the only Philippine convict to have received a
pardon without having shown any sign of remorse or even guilt.
“It is odd,” said Vincent Lazatin, executive director of the
anti-corruption group Transparency and Accountability Network. “A
pardon only makes sense when there is not only an admission of guilt
but also a genuine display of contrition.”
In the absence of both, Lazatin said, “it smells of a political decision.”
Estrada had been a problem for Arroyo, his former vice president,
ever since she succeeded him in 2001 after joining the “people power”
movement to oust him. Even while he was in detention during the trial,
Estrada’s camp helped deal Arroyo her most daunting political
difficulties.
Together with the Philippine left and a sprinkling of politicians
allied neither with him nor Arroyo, Estrada and his allies in Congress
hounded Arroyo over scandals that became so damaging that her
popularity and trust ratings fell to unprecedented depths. No other
Philippine president, for instance, has faced an impeachment complaint
in Congress in each of three consecutive years.
Arroyo needed to neutralize Estrada politically, according to
experts and analysts. Estrada was a “time bomb” that could have chosen
“to explode at the most inconvenient time for Arroyo and the nation,”
said Ramon Casiple, a political analyst at the Institute for Political
and Economic Reforms, a Manila think tank.
Casiple said the pardon would split the political opposition,
allowing Arroyo to buy time and perhaps build support for derailing the
latest impeachment complaint against her in the House of
Representatives, which is scheduled to be addressed next month.
“We must end through peaceful means the acrimony created by Edsa 1,
Edsa 2 and what many call Edsa 3,” Arroyo said Saturday in a speech
before a group of businessmen, referring to the “people power”
uprisings that took place on a Manila highway called Edsa. In “Edsa 3″
in May 2001, a few months after Estrada’s ouster, a mob of his
supporters tried to besiege the presidential palace.
Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera said the pardon should allow
“closure to a chapter in our nation’s history.” The Philippine Chamber
of Commerce and Industry said that “it is time to heal the wounds of
the nation.”
But many Filipinos doubt the country can move on so easily. In
particular, some analysts see the pardon as a setback to the campaign
against corruption in the Philippines. “Accountability in governance is
the biggest casualty,” said Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, a political analyst
who teaches at the University of the Philippines.
The Philippine press has been no less scathing. “Amid all the
corruption scandals, the timing of the pardon has opened the
administration to accusations of indecent haste in the name of
political survival,” The Philippine Star said in an editorial Saturday.
“What are all corrupt public officials thinking? In this country, politics trumps justice anytime.”
