Nowhere to go - SKETCHES by Ana Marie Pamintuan

Deposed President Joseph Estrada may be wishing to be anywhere but the Philippines, where the noose is tightening around him and bad luck is stalking him.

The question is, where will he go? He’s too well-known to go unnoticed in countries where he might want to stay. He has a house in California, but we have an extradition treaty with the United States. As for our closest neighbors, he can’t flee to Malaysia, where he offended Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad for openly siding with jailed opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. Indonesia has enough problems of its own. Much of the international community has expressed support for the Arroyo administration. Who will take in a disgraced president wanted in the Philippines for eight cases of graft and plunder?

Unlike Peru’s former President Alberto Fujimori, who is an ethnic Japanese and is now a Japanese citizen living in Japan, Erap is Pinoy through and through. He has said often enough that he was born here, he lives here and he intends to die here. So there.

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In case he does intend to leave, it will be easy for Erap to fly out on a light plane through the southern backdoor. There are nearly four dozen private airstrips in the Davao provinces and Compostela Valley alone, where light planes are used to inspect and spray plantations. From these airstrips it’s a flight of just over an hour to neighboring Sabah in Malaysia. Bigger jets can take Erap to eastern Indonesia or Brunei. While such flights will require clearance from the Air Transportation Office, it will be easy to conceal his identity.

Erap still has some remaining friends who could lend him planes as they did during his 1998 campaign. But will they allow him to use the planes to escape? Why would they want to attract heat, especially now that the Supreme Court has officially declared him a former president?

That decision, by the way, could dry up some funding sources for Erap’s favored PHLEGM (Puno, Honasan, Lacson, Enrile, Gng. Loi and Miriam). Can Erap bankroll his favored candidates on his own? He and his wife Loi did manage to empty some of their bank accounts, according to prosecutors. But won’t they prefer to save their millions (billions?) for a rainy day, or at least for their legal fees?

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There’s yet another scenario raised by conspiracy theorists: the government itself may allow Erap to escape. Remember, the administration’s original position was that he was free to leave, if only to prevent him from sowing mischief and destabilizing the nation.

This, however, will betray a fear that Erap remains a political force to reckon with – a rallying point of the opposition, someone whose presence is unwanted by the administration in an election year.

This in turn indicates a perception that Pinoys have learned no lessons from Erap’s two and a half years in office. Some of his allies are said to be looking forward to Erap’s arrest and detention before the elections, hoping the underdog image would win sympathy votes for opposition candidates.

The Palace buzz is that there are discussions on whether Erap should be arrested and jailed as soon as possible, at the risk of making him look like an underdog, or whether to be as lenient with him as possible, at the risk of making the administration look like a wimp with no sense of justice.

Maybe the administration can recall the fate of those who stuck with the Marcoses after the 1986 EDSA revolt. What ever happened to Nicanor Yñiguez, for example? Who won in the first congressional elections after EDSA I? The Marcoses did make a political comeback, but only in their local turfs.

Pinoys, for all our fascination with entertainers and populist politicians, do see the truth. We can tell a crook when we see one, given enough information about him. The best way to know the truth about Joseph Estrada is to prosecute him. His detention will be up to the courts to decide.

Erap himself should welcome the chance to prove the innocence that he has steadfastly maintained. He has nowhere to go. The only way he may have the chance to ever leave the country in peace is to prepare for his day in court.

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BUZZ: Hiding wealth? During Erap’s time, there was hardly space to move in the Malacañang parking lot because of all the SUVs and other luxury vehicles. These days, with the Palace recalling all SUVs issued to government officials and the people on the lookout for unexplained wealth, finding a parking space at Malacañang has become a breeze.