Estrada’s rich mistresses / A brave widow’s fight - HERE'S THE SCORE by Teodoro C. Benigno

He did swank and shimmy a lot when he was young. And even when he was much older, he collected women – or mistresses, if you will–because he had a life-long hankering for a voluptuous Venus rising from the half-shell. Joseph Ejercito Estrada was – and remains – like that, a womanizer par excellence, a virtuoso in cherchez la femme. Everything would have been all right if his political ambitions had drawn a line in the ground. If Erap Estrada had remained a senator or a vice president or mayor of a sprawling metropolitan city, he wouldn’t be in the deep hole that he is in today. As it is, his ambitions knew no slaking. He would settle for nothing less than the presidency of the republic. Or bust.

That proved to be his undoing.

For Erap Estrada loved the good life and the endless sprawl of pleasures that money and women could give. And he also loved power and the approving thunder of the herd. The spell of la dolce vita was so entrancing that Estrada decided its ultimate gaiety and gratification could only be had and enjoyed in Malacañang. Power and money at the summit. For this former movie actor, life, love, politics, pelf, power were all a script. Erap had magic and could work it out. He could bring the illusion of the cinema to the harsh reality of politics. It was a matter of timing, of stirring the witches’ brew in the night, of wedding moonlight to the sun.

And, by Jove, he succeeded! He started as mayor of San Juan, a humble beginning, if we might say. Then he got elected to the Senate in 1987. He didn’t do much in the Senate, but who cared? By this time he started learning the ropes that led to the Golden Calf. And then the vice presidency. Then his notorious Chinese-Filipino cabal. Erap Estrada always got by with the excuse – phoney, of course – that he made a lot of money in the movies. He invested this money well and now he could afford to live in style, add to his stable of mistresses, trip forth as the Pied Piper of politics, highly popular no matter what he did or did not do.

Erap should have stopped there. Or he could have wound up his political career as vice president or returned to the Senate. It was then that the shadow of time wrapped itself around Estrada’s shoulders like a warning shawl.

Baltasar Gracian it was who said that God "chasteneth not with a rod but with time." But Joseph Ejercito was then on reckless overdrive. He probably knew in 1998 when he ran for the presidency that he was going to win – and win big. What he didn’t know – and nobody counseled him otherwise – was that the presidency was an apple too big, too treacherous, too overpowering for an ex-movie actor and small town mayor to bite into.

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Former presidents hid their excesses, their peccadilloes, their sins, their misdeeds, their villainies. Manuel L. Quezon had an eye for women. The Great Kastila was a charmer, too, and penetrated many a boudoir. But Quezon had a fine hand for subtlety, never mistreated his wife Doña Aurora, held her high, a gentleman of the old school who never resorted to grand thievery and grand larceny. He never had a stable of broads. He knew his limits. Erap never did as president, and there lay his Waterloo.

Now we learn that Laarni Enriquez possesses a P650 million bank account with the Philippine Savings Bank. So Ombudsman Aniano Desierto tells us. As Popeye would say: "Shiver my timbers!" Where did she get all this money? Every finger points at Erap Estrada. And then we’re back to the 2000 glittering pairs of shoes of Imelda Marcos, her excessive life-style, the millions she would spend in just one shopping spree, the Modiglianis she collected, the skyscrapers the Marcoses bought in Manhattan.

Erap Estrada did not just indulge his women. He spoiled them and how.

If Laarni has P650 million, how much does Guia Gomez have? Both appear to have been the favorite Venuses of Estrada’s life, although when you see them today, the jeweled beauty has deserted their faces, their once irresistible sexual allure gone. You can see that too in Loi, Doctora Loi, who seeks martyrdom by running for the Senate. Pity. Because they will pitch verbal mud in her face, spit at her husband through her. Loi too will be a co-accused, jueteng money in the millions having been spotted in her bank deposits.

And how about Estrada’s other mistresses? Joy Melendrez, Peachy Osorio and Rowena Lopez? They too have lived and continue to live high on the hog with huge bank accounts. Each mistress reportedly receives P250,000 per week just for normal expenses, and this is apart from mansions, jewelry, cars, travels abroad, the wondrous whirligig of woo-woo. To maintain his stable, the ex-president rode the presidency with a heigh-ho stridency and jueteng money was just the beginning. The wages of too many women. He just didn’t know when to stop.

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And now we go to the case, rather the plight of another woman, Carina Agarao, national president of the Crusade against Violence (CAV). She was introduced to me two, three years ago by Anders Hultman, who with Romulo Villa founded the CAV. Carina is on a war footing vis-à-vis Gen. Leandro Mendoza who she considers morally and professionally unfit to head the Philippine National Police (PNP). I find her story credible all the more so because I join the Doubting Thomases who look at General Mendoza with a baleful eye. I, too, am of the opinion he is not qualified for the job.

So we finally got rid of Gen. Panfilo Lacson during whose watch occurred the now feared kidnap-slay of PR practitioner and publicist Bubby Dacer and his driver Orbito and the Dec. 30 terrorist bombings in Metro Manila that killed scores and wounded many. Both are unsolved. The PCIJ (Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism) once probed Lacson’s police career and charged him with human rights abuses and offenses as long as a javelin in flight.

But Mendoza was executive secretary Renato de Villa’s choice for PNP chief. And that had the cachet of King Tiberius anointing Caligula as his adopted son and successor. What power General (ret.) De Villa wields today in Malacañang is unimaginable. He is not only the Little President. According to our informants. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo cowers in his presence. De Villa is the Malacañang genius-in-excelsis of the military establishment the president panders to. And how.

Well, anyway, I met Carina Agarao at lunch last Friday together with Teresita Ang-See, spokesperson of the Chinese-Filipino community. Both narrated they met with General De Villa at Malacañang some time ago and were given short shrift–better still shrilly dismissed – with nary a word of gentleness and understanding. De Villa stated, with a curtness earlier not associated with him, that General Mendoza’s appointment was his responsibility. It was a fait accompli and not even GMA could change that. So it was irreversible and irretrievable. And the two ladies better understand that. Well, Rene, how you have changed! Power?

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Devil (for that is De Villa’s nickname) is wide off the mark.

There have been complaints and charges lodged against General Mendoza and they are serious. He is said to have coddled criminals or criminal syndicates, that he was a compulsive gambler. There is reportedly a video tape showing him waist-deep laying huge bets and reportedly losing millions in a gambling casino. And so on. What De Villa should have done – and that is SOP – was to vet Leandro Mendoza, subject him and his police career to a rigorous probe. In the United States, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) does this. And in the case of cabinet nominees, he or she loses out if it is found the nominee once engaged the services of a non-immigrant employee. That’s how strict and punctilious they are.

Was General Mendoza ever subject to this check? Not on your life. And so, 75 million Filipinos are once again at the mercies of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) Mafia where Devil is at once high priest and presiding potentate.

Carina Agarao’s main brief is this. Her husband was killed April 30, 1996 while lawyering for Alberto Quiatzon. The latter was shot dead by a political rival, namely Lumban, Laguna mayor-to-be Reynato Macalalag and the latter’s political buddy Hector Samonte. Samonte and Macalalag, according to Carina, had killed countless people. "And each time, Samonte was in trouble, Mendoza would always ‘fix’ it for him," she says. Well, let’s short-cut. Luisito San Juan (evidently a Samonte man) was the convicted murderer of Carina’s husband and was caught January 3, 2001.

The implication of Carina is this. Luisito San Juan "disappeared 1-1/2 hours after I refused the request of General Mendoza for me to not see Her Excellency (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) to oppose his appointment." Tessie Ang-See was similarly appealed to by General Ping Lacson and she said, "No way!" As Ms. Agarao feared, the gunman "who would have been state witness in my husband’s case, was already gone." Dead. Carina, of course, suspects General Mendoza as behind Luisito San Juan’s liquidation. Where is justice? We’ll have more to say about this in a future column.