MANILA, Philippines — The absolute presidential pardon granted to former President Joseph Estrada put a formal closure to the most celebrated corruption case ever faced by a Filipino president after Ferdinand Marcos.
With the pardon, the saga of Estrada’s fall from power that started with his impeachment in Congress in October 2000 came full circle. It also created a new political storm that threatens to oust President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
When the political history of the country in the first two decades of the 21st century is written, it will be defined by the intertwined fates of two presidencies — that of Estrada and of Ms Arroyo.
Estrada’s fate was sealed by corruption; Ms Arroyo’s hinges on a similar issue. Both presidencies are two sides of the same coin. Neither presidency can claim moral ascendancy over the other on the corruption issue.
While it was the Arroyo presidency that initiated the first plunder case against Estrada, she also cleared Estrada of the criminal stigma of corruption with the absolute pardon.
The executive clemency allowed Estrada to escape the ignominious fate suffered by Marcos.
Marcos fled in February 1986 before a successor government could organize corruption charges against him, and before an angry mob that stormed Malacañang had a chance to lynch him.
Estrada is now a free man, with political rights fully restored by executive clemency, not prompted by humanitarian considerations but more so by the crass demands of political expediency.
The pardon came in the wake of breaches of legal procedures governing equal treatment of citizens charged with criminal offenses.
Extraordinary leniency
Estrada enjoyed exceptional treatment that affronted citizens’ conception of fair and equal administration of justice. The exemptions reinforced their cynicism that the powerful and influential are above the law.
No convicted criminal has been treated with more extraordinary leniency than Estrada. Special rules were made for him in the effort to buy peace with his supporters.
When Estrada visited San Juan City Hall upon his release, he was unrepentant. He told some 3,000 supporters, “I may have committed mistakes in my career in public service, but I assure you that corruption is not one of them.”
The President granted the pardon on three grounds: Estrada is 70 years old and qualifies for clemency under the policy of releasing inmates who have reached that age; he had been under detention for six and a half years; and he “has publicly committed to no longer seek elective office.”
The real reason was spelled out in the President’s speech at the Philippine business conference at Manila Hotel on Friday. She said the pardon was aimed at ending “the single most significant cause of political noise and controversy” in her tumultuous presidency.
Force for righteousness
She sought to make the pardon “a powerful force for righteousness, compassion, healing, national stability and advancement.” She said “the people deserve peace, order and political stability. We have seen through many upheavals.”
She said that if “I have showed concern for the personal circumstances of the former President, it is not a sign of diminished determination to see justice done. It is our sensitivity to the feelings of the segments of our masa who continue to identify with his personal circumstances.”
The official reasons are absolute rubbish. They conceal the narrow objective — political expediency to save her beleaguered presidency.
The extraordinary cutting of corners of legal process and privileges granted to Estrada during the past six years has severely undermined the institutional foundations of the fair administration of justice. The judicial system is the first casualty of the pardon.
The pardon has already divided the country probably more deeply than before. The President has lost ground with the civil society groups that have placed much store by the institutional underpinnings of a fair judicial system.
‘Terrible calamity’
Even the Roman Catholic hierarchy was alienated, along with such valued political allies as former President Fidel V. Ramos. In revulsion, Ramos blasted the pardon as “a terrible, terrible calamity to the great majority of the Filipino people who have suffered from the plunder.”
There is no sign that the pardon has begun to win over Estrada’s urban poor constituency. When Estrada asked 5,000 supporters in San Juan on Friday to applaud Ms Arroyo for giving him back his freedom, they didn’t respond. Instead, they booed when the President’s name was mentioned.
Ms Arroyo overvalued the Estrada factor as a key to political peace and stability. Similarly, Estrada has overestimated his pivotal role in destabilizing the Arroyo administration.
Estrada was not a key factor in the 8-5 result of the May senatorial election in favor of the opposition. The opposition won more seats not because of Estrada’s effort to make it a referendum between him and Ms Arroyo, but because of the damaging issues against the administration.
Dangerous rift
The President’s strategists had thought that by removing Estrada from the picture, the pardon would allow her to rebuild her defenses that were crumbling under the pressures of corruption scandals over the broadband contract with the Chinese telecommunication company, ZTE Corp., and the cash payoff to congressmen and governors to bribe them into killing new impeachment complaints against her.
The ZTE deal has opened a dangerous rift between Ms Arroyo and Speaker Jose de Venecia, whose son, Jose de Venecia III, has denounced the President’s husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo, for intervening in the deal by telling him to back off from pressing his bid to review the contract.
This rift has opened cracks on the façade of the Lakas-led coalition in the House of Representatives. De Venecia can no longer be depended upon to rally the numbers to kill new impeachment moves. There are also plots to unseat him as Speaker.
Nothing but scorn
The opposition members in the House, including Rep. Ronaldo Zamora of San Juan, are treating new impeachment complaints on the strength of the evidence backing these. They are not taking cues from Estrada and, Zamora has said, his fellow opposition would not be influenced by the pardon. The impeachment threat remains.
There are no tectonic shifts in alliances in the House as a result of the pardon. It cannot save the President from a crumbling coalition. She gained nothing but more scorn.