Ex-Actor Garners Rave Reviews as Philippines’ President

At 20,000 feet, winging home in his executive jet, Joseph Estrada is flying high, putting distance between himself and critics who once dismissed him as a genial buffoon and said his presidency would make the Philippines the laughingstock of Southeast Asia.

Estrada, 61--college dropout, admitted womanizer, lusty drinker and ex-tough-guy actor--settled back in his cabin and lighted a Lucky Strike. He has an Elvis Presley pompadour and a Jackie Gleason jowly, sleepy-eyed face, which on this day is aglow: The Philippine peso is getting stronger. His approval ratings are stratospheric. Everyone, it seems, is praising him as a new breed of Asian leader who cares about the poor, takes a strong stand on human rights and speaks to his countrymen in a way that is simple but not simple-minded.

In Mindanao, inaugurating a sugar mill two hours earlier, he had wowed 500 workers with self-disparaging humor and folksy words about rural progress. Now, headed back to Manila, his official duties done, he is relishing a moment of semi-privacy, with his smokes and coffee and stories about his roller-coaster ride from B-movie hero to populist president.

“We’ve got this elite group in the Philippines who think they know everything because they have a master’s degree,” Estrada says. “They can’t believe they have this actor as their leader, but I love being the rebel. Ever since childhood I’ve been that way. I had nine brothers and sisters, and I was the black sheep.

“The people trust me because they know I tell them the truth, know I can feel their pulse. I listen to them. As an actor I’ve played a farmer, a squatter, all kinds of roles, and that’s a big advantage. I’ve been on location with these people, and I understand their problems better than someone with a fancy degree.”

Though Estrada’s campaign was full of stumbles, malapropisms, mixed metaphors and issues he didn’t appear to grasp, he assumed the presidency last summer with the biggest electoral mandate in national history, largely by promising to help the poor. The feisty media gave him a honeymoon that lasted a little less than a day, and still his approval ratings continued to soar, up to 82% in the most recent poll.

Speech Draws Praise at Economic Summit

“People are always watching me, waiting for me to make some mistake,” he said. But he skillfully negotiated a solution to his first national crisis, the collapse of the Philippines national airline; he was refreshingly blunt in condemning human rights abuses in Malaysia; and he delivered a well-received keynote address in his first international appearance, at an economic summit in Singapore in October. The buffoon jokes quickly faded.

“Yes, I was nervous in Singapore, a little,” he said. “I was up until 4 in the morning the night before, going over the issues. I kept telling my aides, ‘Now bear with me on this.’ There were seven questions after the speech. The first two, I’d been briefed on. When I got through them easily, I relaxed.”

Estrada has calmed investors who feared, incorrectly, that he was anti-business and quieted skeptics by appointing a group of respected economic advisors. Still, his unpretentious manner--he frequently wears sneakers and jeans and avoids sitting at the head of the dinner table unless demanded by protocol--unnerves traditionalists used to less candor and more pomp.

Asked by a journalist about civil unrest in Malaysia, he said, “Maybe they’ll rise up one day like we did here,” and his press secretary gulped at the undiplomatic directness. Confirming he would not intercede in the Philippines’ first execution since martial law in 1972, Estrada said the convicted rapist should ignore the red phone outside the death chamber that could bring word of an eleventh-hour reprieve “because I’m not going to be calling.”

In Singapore, he was impressed with the city’s spotlessly tidy streets and decided his own capital was a mess. He returned home and kicked off a “Clean Up Manila” campaign by donning boots, gloves and work clothes and scrubbing public toilets.

He is moving out of the presidential palace and into a nearby guest house, appears a little uncomfortable when an honor guard snaps to attention as he treads the red carpet to his jet, and keeps his schedule clear on Sundays so he can cook lunch for his 93-year-old mother, of whom he says ruefully, “I know I have given her a lot of heartache.”

As an actor, small-town mayor, senator and vice president, Estrada never hid his penchant for prowling nightclubs, fathering children out of wedlock, keeping mistresses and treating life like one big party. He says he’s put his vices behind him and wouldn’t think of stepping out on his wife, Loi, a doctor he met as a young man while mopping hospital floors.

“Yes, Estrada is a nice guy, but there’s no doubt he’s out of his league as president,” said Exequiel Garcia, president of the Philippines Chamber of Commerce. “The pity is that voters no longer try to figure out who’s qualified for president. They vote for entertainment value.”

Indeed, 40% of those elected to office in May by voters in metropolitan Manila come from an entertainment background. They include professional athletes, actors and TV personalities. The country, moans Garcia, is in danger of ending up with a government of celebrities.

Many View Leader as a Robin Hood

Estrada also has made some Filipinos uneasy by appointing friends to lucrative positions and by being too cozy with cronies of the country’s late, disgraced president, Ferdinand E. Marcos, and his widow, Imelda, who is fighting to retain the fortune Marcos accumulated while in office.

But to common folks who value instinct more than intellect, this hardly matters. Nor does it much matter to the underprivileged whether Estrada becomes the voice of democracy and economic reform in Southeast Asia, as some political analysts have suggested is happening.

What does matter--even though Estrada came from a prominent family and is wealthy in his own right--is that for the first time in memory they have a president who speaks for them. They still see Estrada as a Robin Hood who battled the rich and the evil to help the poor. And, they are quick to point out, they remember that Estrada’s movies always had a happy ending.