Homecoming

After repeated attempts for almost five years now, the battery of lawyers of former President Joseph Estrada has finally succeeded in getting the Sandiganbayan to grant a Christmas "pass" to their client. And to think Estrada had to spend his past four Christmases in detention away from his home since 2001 when, in fact, he could have enjoyed such an accommodation by the anti-graft court in the first place.

For almost five years now, Estrada has been in detention while undergoing trial for plunder at the Sandiganbayan. Throughout these years, the seeming bone of contention in the past about this request to spend Christmas at home by Estrada focused mainly on arguments of prosecution and defense lawyers over terminology. Government prosecutors headed by Ombudsman Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio vehemently opposed the word "furlough" which, in legal terms, means the grant of a leave of absence from court. So in the end, both sides finally agreed to the term "pass" that now allows the deposed President to leave his rest house detention in Tanay, Rizal to celebrate Christmas and New Year for the first time again at his residence at No.1 Polk St. in Greenhills, San Juan.

The Sandiganbayan approved the overnight "pass" for Estrada for the Yule season to stay at his home, not just for once but twice, though it’s one after the other. The first overnight "pass" is for Christmas, Dec. 24-25 and for New Year’s Day, Dec. 31 to Jan. 1.

It will be a homecoming for Estrada to his Polk residence where he left in a dramatic fashion when hordes of policemen came to arrest him on plunder charges in April 2001.

But as early as yesterday, Estrada was only a few steps away from setting his foot again in his Polk residence by virtue of the Sandiganbayan "pass" that allowed him to attend the wake of his late brother, Antonio, whose remains lie in state at the Sanctuario de San Jose in East Greenhills. The 72-year old Antonio, who succumbed to cancer last Sunday, will be interred at the Ejercito Mausoleum in the San Juan public cemetery after the 10 a.m. concelebrated Mass today at the Sanctuario. The anti-graft court, however, specifically disallowed Estrada from joining the funeral march.

Estrada returned to his neighborhood under his past court "passes", limited to a 24-hour absence from his rest house detention. As of press time yesterday, Estrada’s 100-year old ailing mother, Doña Mary was still at the San Juan Medical Center where she has been under "guarded condition" for an aneurysm of the stomach. As per this particular Sandiganbayan-approved "pass," Estrada can only visit and stay where his mother is. Estrada might be forced to sleep the night over at his mother’s bedside at the hospital after paying his last respects to his brother’s wake in Sanctuario.

The late Antonio, a bachelor, was the fifth of the ten Ejercito siblings but was the fourth to pass away. The former President, now 68 years old, is the eighth Ejercito sibling, and considers his late brother Antonio as the "handsomest" among the sons but the most shy one.

Estrada admitted to this writer the death of his brother Antonio came to him not as painfully as when his bosom buddy, the late action star, Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ), suddenly died due to an aneurysm of the brain on Dec.14 last year. One year after the death of his bosom buddy, Estrada still grieves for his Pareng Ronnie with whom he had shared the same passions in life.

"Ronnie, to me, was worth my nine brothers and sisters put all together," Estrada said.

Estrada immortalized his friendship and fond memories of FPJ in putting up the "El Rey" (The King) museum at his Tanay rest house and put aside in the meantime the construction of his own presidential library.

Estrada confessed there have been many attempts by administration emissaries who came to Tanay to talk to him at the height of the May 2004 presidential election campaign to ask him to stay away, if he could not withdraw his support for the candidacy of FPJ who run against President Arroyo.

From his first attempt in politics when he first run and almost lost due to cheating in the mayoral race in San Juan in the 1960s, Estrada cited FPJ had always been at his side to campaign for him. During his subsequent election to the Senate, then the Vice Presidency in 1992, up to the 1998 presidential elections, Estrada remembered with fondness that FPJ did not make any movie just to help him in the campaigns.

This was why, Estrada rued, he was so conscience-stricken when he could not personally campaign for FPJ in last year’s presidential elections. But he reiterated his belief FPJ won the presidential race over Mrs. Arroyo. What grieved him more, Estrada insisted was that Mrs. Arroyo did not only use government resources for her campaign but cheated and stole the victory from FPJ to force her way to stay further in office.

Estrada, however, vehemently denies accusations of administration supporters that he was behind the release of the "Hello Garci" wiretapping tapes that contained the damning evidence of Mrs. Arroyo’s alleged "lying, cheating and stealing" during the May 2004 elections in her supposed telephone conversations with former Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner Virgilio Garcillano. If the administration’s claims were indeed true, the former President argued, he would have spent as much as needed to acquire those tapes while FPJ was still alive and contesting Mrs. Arroyo’s victory before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET). But FPJ died even before the PET could even open the contested ballot boxes and his electoral protest died with him. So he urged his allies in Congress to press their public hearings on the "Hello Garci" tapes to bring out the truth.

"Only the closure of the ‘Hello Garci’ tapes will vindicate the victory of FPJ," Estrada pointed out.

He conceded his bosom buddy was definitely much popular than him and his movies were consistent box office hits. Thus, Estrada never made any movies or released his movies at the same time as any FPJ movie. Estrada and FPJ did at least a dozen blockbuster movies they co-starred in but only one flopped in the box office. This was the movie entitled "Los Palikeros," which he recalled was a Tagalog spaghetti-western comedy movie with a kiss-kiss and bang-bang plot. Why it flopped at the box office, Estrada chuckled: "Our fans did not believe that we were palikeros!" In rough translation, the title means The Womanizers.

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