Philippine Army on Alert as Estrada Trial Starts

Saying he had faith in God and his own innocence, a humbled President Joseph Estrada went on trial in the Philippine Senate on Thursday on charges of bribery and corruption. If found guilty, the former movie star, who has a stable of mistresses and a penchant for partying, would be stripped of the presidency.

The army was on alert, and streets around the waterfront Senate chamber were filled with thousands of the president’s loyalists and critics. In a process expected to take weeks, 15 of the nation’s 22 senators would have to establish a “balance of probability” of guilt to convict Estrada. Few analysts are willing to write his political obituary yet.

Regardless of the outcome, the stakes are high for the Philippines and its hard-won democracy. Among the key questions:

Will the fate of Estrada, the first Asian head of state to face an impeachment trial, be decided in the courtroom or the streets? Will the senators vote on the credibility of evidence or the strength of personal loyalty? Will the army stay out of politics, or leave the barracks to determine the outcome?

“I had two messages when I talked with the army’s senior enlisted men the other day,” Defense Minister Orlando Mercado said. “One, don’t allow yourselves to be used by the political opposition. Two, we in the government will not use you to stay in power. The president has been clear: He will not stay in office one minute if he is convicted. I can assure you any talk of a coup is only in the imagination of the headline writers.”

Prosecutors began laying out the case against Estrada on Thursday by comparing him to the Philippines’ late dictator, Ferdinand E. Marcos, who amassed an estimated $2 billion and was ousted in a popular revolt in 1986.

“I wonder, who is the bigger crook?” said Rep. Joker Arroyo, one of 11 congressmen serving as prosecutors in the Senate trial. Arroyo said the handwriting on a $3-million check gave away Estrada’s efforts to hide assets in a bank account under a false name.

Roguish Charm Fueled Spicy Stories

For weeks, the Philippine press has been full of spicy stories about the president, a man with roguish charm who shunned the trappings of office. “Lover for All Seasons,” said one headline on a story about Estrada’s sexual exploits. There have been scandalous exposes about the president’s all-night drinking and gambling sessions as he put the country on autopilot and caroused with old cronies.

But on the eve of his trial, an independent poll reported that 41% of Manila residents still supported him. His ratings remained far higher than those of the political and religious figures trying to oust him.

In those numbers were two axioms of Philippine society: First, Filipinos believe all politicians are crooked; and second, men are not scorned for having a mistress or two. The practice is considered by many to be manly and even admirable for those who have achieved financial independence and career success.

“If my own mother doesn’t complain about this [the mistresses], why should they?” said Estrada’s son, Jinggoy, in a rebuff to Cardinal Jaime Sin, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Manila, who claims Estrada is morally unfit for public office.

But Estrada, 63, is not charged, directly at least, with moral dereliction or political incompetence.

In October, a former drinking buddy with a shady reputation, provincial governor Luis Singson, went public with a bombshell: Twice a month, he had been delivering to Estrada at Malacanang Palace attache cases stuffed with pesos--more than $10 million worth--from illegal gambling profits and skimmed tobacco excise taxes.

Estrada said that Singson offered bribes but that he refused them. Singson, who admitted he siphoned the funds from his province and now faces prison, said he would have kept silent if Estrada had given him the gambling franchise he wanted instead of bestowing it on a political enemy, who happens to be Singson’s brother.

Estrada’s defense attorney, Estelito Mendoza, charged that Singson was a liar who falsified documents.

Aides said Estrada spent Thursday in the presidential palace, drinking coffee and watching the trial on television.

For more than a year, Estrada’s senior staff had sensed things were getting out of control. There were rumors of $50,000 necklaces given to lovers, huge contracts awarded to cronies in Estrada’s “midnight cabinet,” opulent mansions being built for mistresses and national decisions made over Johnny Walker scotch and $200 bottles of wine.

One night in April 1999, six key aides met over dinner to discuss their concerns and agreed that Estrada’s presidency was at risk.

“One of us was chosen to write a memo and level with the president,” said a staffer who was at the dinner. “But it never really happened, in a direct way at least. I mean, we had no evidence, only rumors. His approval rating was 82%. He was golden then, riding high. What could we do?”

During that time, Sheila Coronel, executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, began pouring over documents, sifting through rumors and interviewing witnesses. The results of the investigation are now being published.

“We found 17 lots and/or houses linked to Estrada through multilayered companies owned by his cronies; 66 companies in which wives or children were operatives, shareholders or board directors; five households he maintained, each of which he visited fairly often,” she said. “There was a household for him and the first lady and households for wives No. 2, 3, 4 and 5.”

But the carelessness and magnitude of the alleged corruption stunned Filipinos, who have had a tolerance, even affection, for Estrada’s misdemeanors and unpretentious owning up to human failings.

The fact that evidence of his misdeeds mounted at a time when the economy was sputtering added to the opposition’s arsenal.

“If all this had happened when the economy was firing on all cylinders with 8% or 9% growth, we would have just looked on Estrada as good theater,” said political analyst Alex Magno.

The opposition is playing with fire, Magno and others say. With its street rallies and drumbeat of anti-Estrada rhetoric, it is probably doing more to hurt the economy and shake investor confidence than the president ever did. If it pushes too hard, it risks bringing not just Estrada but the whole country down. And if Estrada is acquitted, he could govern by retribution.

The Philippines remains a feudal society, ruled by an elite--the Catholic Church, the business community, the landed politicians. And the elite seethed when Estrada was elected president in 1998 to a single six-year term with the largest electoral mandate in the nation’s history.

With Singson’s charges of corruption, the elite finally got a chance to pounce. But even then, it was difficult not to like Estrada, especially for the poor.

He was a man who cooked Sunday dinner for his 90-year-old mother. He ate rice off banana leaves with his fingers at banquets for the poor. He pampered friends and reached out to the underclass, something no other president had done.

Trying to sway the poor, businessmen and socialites hosted a lavish free luncheon for farmers and slum dwellers last week in the Makati business district. They served chicken and pork stewed in vinegar and provided forks and knives, which the guests didn’t know how to use. Afterward the poor went back to their shacks, and the elite ducked into the five-star Peninsula Hotel.

The next day, Estrada held his own “people power” lunch--an echo of the movement that forced Marcos to flee to Hawaii in 1986--and he and the guests shoveled rice and milkfish into their mouths with bare hands.

Cleric’s Message May Confuse Underclass

One of Estrada’s loudest critics is Cardinal Sin. But in a Catholic country where one-third the nation’s 70 million people live on $1 a day or less, the underclass may be confused by the cleric’s message. He lists gambling as a social evil but acknowledges accepting millions of dollars from the state’s legal gaming operations. “I’d accept money from the devil to use for the church’s work,” Sin has said.

The most important thing as the trial begins may not be the political fate of Estrada but how the Philippines’ democracy responds.

“The jury is still out, literally and figuratively,” former President Fidel V. Ramos said. “But in the end, I think democracy in the Philippines will be strengthened, not weakened, by the crisis. We are following the constitution. There is freedom of expression in the streets, without violence.”