Like GMA, Estrada says he, too, has ‘plenty’ of sex

Not one to be outdone despite being detained in a military hospital while standing trial on plunder charges, deposed President Joseph Estrada said that like his successor President Arroyo, he also gets "plenty" of sex.

This was confirmed by his wife, opposition Sen. Loi Ejercito, who visited him yesterday at the presidential suite of the Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC), which Estrada shares with his son and co-accused, former San Juan Mayor Jinggoy Estrada.

The Estrada couple, however, did not elaborate on how they do their plentiful act in the VMMC suite that consists of a big reception room, two bedrooms, a kitchen and a bathroom.

Estrada has been in hospital since April last year for health reasons, in particular his arthritic knees, while he is tried for plunder and other charges before the Sandiganbayan anti-graft court.

Estrada and the senator were joking yesterday with several invited reporters at the VMMC suite about the "Plenty!" retort of Mrs. Arroyo last week to a foreign correspondent who wanted to know if she still managed to have sex.

"Plenty! Plenty! Plenty!" Estrada readily shot back when asked the same question.

A visibly amused Ejercito concurred, and said, laughing, that she too has "Plenty!"

"Kasi solong-solo niya ako (Because she has me all to herself)," Estrada explained.

Ejercito had recently undergone mammography at Stanford Hospital and disclosed that she is going back there next month during the Senate recess to complete her medical examinations.

The 65-year-old Estrada, who has been known for his womanizing and having sired children outside his marriage to the senator, is rumored to be allowed also to entertain "conjugal visits" by his other women at the VMMC.

Among the better known ones are former starlets Guia Gomez (San Juan Mayor JV Ejercito’s mother); Laarni Enriquez (by whom he has three children), and Joy Melendrez.

Although Estrada has publicly acknowledged his extra-marital affairs with them, the deposed leader said all the alleged mansions he had given to each of them were during the time he was not yet president and that the money used in the purchase came from his personal fortune he amassed as an award-winning actor.

"My life has been an open book. My sex life is even public knowledge," Estrada told The STAR.

Mrs. Arroyo, it will be recalled, told Palace reporters she found nothing wrong with her straightforward "Plenty!" reply to the sex question asked during the Oct. 9 luncheon forum with the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines.

"I’ll tell you. People seem to have forgotten the distinction between sex as a sacrament and sex as a sin," she pointed out.

"Sex inside marriage is a sacrament. And the Church, in fact, encourages couples to be very active in their sex life with each other. Sex in sin, that’s another," the President said.

Feeling alluded to, Estrada said the Filipino people voted for him during the May 1998 presidential elections despite public knowledge of his very plentiful sex life.

"They said a womanizer used to occupy Malacañang. Now it’s a ‘man-izer’," he said in Filipino.