Estrada Begins Unlikely Comeback in Philippines - NYTimes.com

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By CARLOS H. CONDE

QUEZON CITY, PHILIPPINES — It was an improbable sight: a slightly hunched man, with a gait that suggested either his age (72) or infirmity (a bad back and knees that required replacement surgery), beating up a taller opponent no older than 30.

The older man ducked as the younger one tried to bang him with a piece of wood. He cut him down with a right to the abdomen and a left hook to the face, sending his adversary stumbling to the ground. Then another opponent got smacked in the face and kicked in the midsection with one of those bad knees. Yet another came along, and he, too, went down, crashing into a table.

“I missed doing this,” the older man, Joseph Estrada — longtime actor and onetime president of the Philippines — said moments after the director cried “Cut!” Mr. Estrada then walked toward the gate of the bus terminal where the movie was being shot and waved at the gawking crowd, which delightedly waved back. He moved closer to his fans, who giggled, hugged and kissed him, some whipping out cellphone cameras.

“Don’t forget me, okay? We will take back Malacanang!” he hollered as he clambered up the hood of a jeepney, the ubiquitous Philippine minibus. The crowd responded by chanting his moniker: “Erap! Erap! Erap!”

Malacanang is the presidential palace, and Mr. Estrada managed to stay there for less than half of his six-year term. He was driven from office in 2001, during what is now known as People Power 2, after a Senate impeachment trial on allegations of corruption — including accusations he took kickbacks from gambling lords — was cut short by attempts by Mr. Estrada’s allies to suppress evidence, sending Filipinos to the streets in protest.

Last week, Mr. Estrada announced during his party’s convention that he would run again for president in the election next year, calling it his “final, final performance.” The announcement, needless to say, flummoxed his political opponents and upset the Philippines’ already rambunctious politics.

Mr. Estrada, returning to movies after a break of more than two decades — which includes the six years he spent in prison for plunder and corruption — satisfies a lifelong passion. “I love making movies. Without the movies, there would not be a Joseph Estrada,” he said in between takes on the set of the comedy “One and Only Family.”

And returning to politics — despite his promise to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo when she pardoned him in 2007 that he would never again seek elective office — is a chance to take care of unfinished political business. In an interview on the movie set, Mr. Estrada said his decision to run again was important to him “so I can clean up my name and prove to those who removed me that they were wrong.”

Whether he can accomplish this is not clear. The Philippine Constitution prohibits a president from seeking another term. Mr. Estrada insists, however, that he was never given a chance to finish his term, so this doesn’t apply.

“I am not running for re-election,” he said. “I am running for election.”

His opponents, particularly within the Arroyo administration, vow to take the issue to the Supreme Court.

More than settling old scores, however, Mr. Estrada insists that he is acting in the interests of the nation. “I want to continue what I started,” he said.

He promised, for instance, to resume his “all-out war” against Islamic separatists and Communist insurgents. And, he added, with no hint of irony, “There is so much corruption going on now that we have to have change.”

Saddled with the corruption charges, which he continues to deny, and a legacy of misrule, which he continues to challenge, Mr. Estrada hopes to endear himself once again to Filipinos — through the movies, at least for now.

Many still adore him, but many, too, are offended not just by his audacity but also by his insistence that what happened in 2001 was an illegal coup staged by the country’s elite.

“It is only in the Philippines where a disgraced president who was ousted by a people’s uprising would dare run for the presidency again, without atoning for his past mistakes and even insisting that he did nothing wrong,” wrote Benjie Oliveros, a political columnist.

Indeed, Mr. Estrada’s assistants have been distributing a flier featuring some of the world’s most influential publications criticizing People Power 2.

“Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took over the presidency in constitutional circumstances that do not stand up well to scrutiny,” says The Economist. “People Power has become an acceptable term for a troubling phenomenon, one that used to be known as mob rule,” says Time magazine.

“They hated me so much that they never stopped demonizing me,” Mr. Estrada said, puffing on a cigarette that he tried to hide each time a photographer snapped his picture. (“I don’t want young people to see me smoking,” he said.) “They threw at me not just the kitchen sink but also the toilet bowl,” he said, chuckling, evidently pleased with his play of words. “But I never stopped being the president of this country.”

That appears true, at least on this movie set in Quezon City. He arrived with the trappings of power: in a shiny, black Lincoln Navigator, escorted by two police officers on motorcycles. The umbrella his assistant held over him bore the presidential seal. People addressed him as “presidente.” The set was Mr. Estrada’s domain, just as Malacanang had been.

In the 1950s, show business provided an escape for Mr. Estrada, who had dropped out of an engineering course. Of the 10 children in the family, Joseph Marcelo Ejercito — as he was known before he adopted the screen name Joseph Estrada — was the only one who did not graduate from college.

But, he says, he made up for it by excelling in the movies. He made more than 100 films in a career spanning three decades and won countless acting awards.

In many of these films, Mr. Estrada portrayed poor men seeking justice. Although he was never really poor, he said he “identified with these roles” and tried to plumb the depths of his characters. “I researched my roles so I understand how it is to be poor,” he said. “I have been a jeepney driver, a labor leader, a Communist guerrilla.”

These roles endeared him to Filipino voters, Mr. Estrada said, enough for them to elect him first as mayor — for 17 years — of San Juan, a suburb in Metro Manila, then as senator, vice president and finally president. He impressed nationalists when he produced and starred in “In the Claws of the Eagle,” a 1991 film that was highly critical of U.S. military bases. “I am proud to say that that movie helped in kicking out the bases,” he said.

That the movie he is making now is a comedy about a jeepney driver who gives his daughter’s boyfriend a hard time — in other words, a movie with no obvious political significance — is hardly an issue with Mr. Estrada. “I enjoy doing this, and I missed doing this,” he said. Besides, the movie, with its use of the iconic jeepney, could advance his political agenda; a movement he created, “Jeep ni Erap,” continues to recruit supporters.

After a makeup artist retouched his face, Mr. Estrada stood up and positioned himself beside a jeepney to rehearse another fight scene. With a brio that seemed somewhat at odds with his hunched figure and sagging features, he lunged at a thug, grabbed his head and slammed it on the hood of the vehicle. The director yelled “Cut!” — and Mr. Estrada, ever so slightly, pumped his fist.