I received an email today from a cousin of mine. It was an article about the Estrada conviction. Strange as it seems, there are many who believe Estrada should be pardoned, much worse, there are countless of believe him innocent and a victim of political sabotage, the stooge of an orchestrated political plot. Well… it is a free country.
But before you read the article I must say that there are a few things which I am getting alarmed about.
First, I find it ridiculous for the present government now considering giving “convicted-guilty” Estrada a pardon. What on earth is going on in the heads of the bright boys in Malacañang.
If we were to speculate I’d say our government has no strong resolve, and is made up of a bunch of wimps who are scared of these rumored destabilization plots and are scared of action by the so called masses who are said to be loyal Estrada followers. Well, the conviction came, and went; not much going on… but I guess it is when it is really quiet that you have to really be extra attentive or whatever happens could catch you off guard.
This preposterous Presidential Pardon simply makes a mockery of a justice system which decent public servants have sought hard to uphold.
Second thing I was getting appalled about however did not have the time to write about. It is without a doubt that there have been several political scandals of late. All these senate hearings and investigations on TV, money and bribes in the hundreds of millions. The anniversary of the imposition of Martial Law by Ferdinand Marcos was observed recently and there were some people who said that Marcos was a great leader, martial law was the best time for the Philippines and so on.
I could not help but exclaim, “are they out of their mind”. Oh these young, idealistic, activists with their misplaced passions and easily toyed with and impressionable minds, how they complain about the current government and easily claim that martial law was grand. Apparently again proclamations of the ignorant, those who were never really around or were too young to know what martial law was about; how the countless bodies in unmarked graves probably turned in their unhallowed makeshift graves with the verbose Martial Law was good and Marcos a great leader.
Sure, Marcos was indeed one of a kind, a great leader… he did start out great but alas, as they say “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Whatever the cause may have been, the Marcos’ that exited from Malacañang was a very different person from the Marcos that enterred it 25 years earlier.
And today, the Marcosed are back, in power, in politics, and in wealth that never seems to run out… while in their silent unfound and unmarked graves lay the thousands upon thousands of silent witnesses of a regime that abducted, silenced, killed those who were opposed to the dictator.
Ignorance could be very dangerous… especially if the ignorant are the ones who are very vocal about their convictions which are based on partial information.
Empty cans ring out loud you know. They might not carry some weight, but they sure can be as loud and annoying as ever.
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Telltale Signs/ NO TEARS FOR ESTRADA
Rodel E. Rodis, September 17, 2007
On the day the Estrada verdict was announced last week, a retired man who needed my help in his claim for social security benefits in the Philippines professed sympathy for the former president, expressing his hope that he
would be shown mercy because he had suffered enough.
Like most people, he had not read the 212 page decision of the Philippine Anti Graft Court (Sandigan Bayan), finding former president Joseph aka Erap Estrada Guilty of Plunder. If he had read the complete decision, he would have discovered the ironic connection between his problems with the SSS and the basis for the plunder verdict.
(For the transcripts, log on to http://www.manilamail.com)
It took six years for the Sandigan court to try the Estrada case, most of the delays caused by Estrada himself. At one point, he fired all his attorneys so that a mistrial could occur. But after the court provided him with new attorneys, which he promptly rejected, Estrada retained new counsel and proceeded with a strategy to run out the clock until his close personal friend, Fernando Poe, Jr. (FPJ), could win the presidency in the May 2004
elections and dismiss all the charges against him.
But when FPJ lost, Estrada had no choice but to finally deal with the prosecution’s case by seeking to undermine the credibility of the court and by claiming that the trial is “politically motivated” to justify his removal from office. Very little was done by his lawyers to debunk the voluminous evidence presented in court.
In the course of the trial despite innumerable delays, dozens of witnesses described how Estrada collected billions of Philippine pesos in “jueteng” protection money which they regularly delivered in cash to his Polk Street mansion in San Juan in Metro Manila. It was like a mob scene from “The Sopranos”. But the most damning witnesses against Estrada were those he appointed to public office.
Carlos (aka Chucky) Arellano testified that he was a childhood friend of Estrada who appointed him chairman and president of the Social Security System (SSS) in 1998. On October 6, 1999, he received a call from Pres.
Estrada instructing him to buy Belle Corporation stock. He hesitated to do so, he said, because that decision belonged to the SSS investment committee which selected the stocks to invest in for the millions of Filipinos who had contributed to it. However, after further prodding from Estrada, Arellano unilaterally authorized the purchase by SSS of P900-M (pesos) ($20-M) in Belle stocks on October 21, 1999, just 15 days after he was directed to do so.
Federico Pascual testified that he was the president of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) in 1999, appointed by Estrada, when he was instructed to purchase Belle shares. He hesitated to do the president
bidding, he said, because the Belle Corporation was involved in jai-alai and gambling and had a speculative flavor. But after receiving another call from Estrada on October 9, 1999, he went ahead and authorized the purchase
by GSIS of P1.1-B (pesos) ($25-M) in Belle stock.
A close crony of Estrada, Jaime Dichaves, facilitated the transaction. Belle Corporation executives testified that they issued a cashiers check to Dichaves in the amount of P189-M($4-M) (International Exchange Bank Check
No. 6000159271 dated November 5, 1999 ) as his 10% commission for securing the purchase by SSS and GSIS of close to P2-B (pesos) ($45-M) in Belle stocks.
Bank executives then testified that Dichaves deposited the 10% commission of P189-Mil. ($4-Mil) into the bank account of Jose Velarde, in Equitble Bank. Dichaves deposited an additional amount of P74-M (pesos) into the same account.
Clarissa Ocampo, an Equitable Bank manager, testified that she personally witnessed Estrada sign his name as Jose Velarde in withdrawing funds from the Equitable Bank, an allegation that was openly admitted by Estrada
himself. Bank executives testified that there were Joint accounts in the bank of Jose Velarde & Loi Ejercito (Estradas legal wife).
Bank executives also testified that it was from this same Jose Velarde account that Estrada purchased the Boracay Mansion near Wack-Wack Golf Club for the use of his favored mistress, Laarni Enriquez. The man who facilitated the purchase of this mansion was Jose Luis Yulo who, because of this housing experience, was then appointed by Estrada to be his Secretary of Housing, replacing the very competent Karina Constantino-David.
The prosecution’s evidence was just too over whelming, the Sandigan Bayan justices had no other choice but to find Estrada guilty of plunder, beyond a reasonable doubt. Sifting through the testimonies of eyewitnesses, one concludes that Estrada never believed that he would ever have to account for his actions so he didn’t care who witnessed what he was doing. Transparency turned out not to be a virtue and stupidity not a viable defense.
But the joke was on the people. When GSIS and SSS bought Belle stocks, As instructed by then PRES. ESTRADA, in 1999, they were priced at P3.14 a share. One year later, on December 29,2000, their value had sunk dramatically to 60 centavos a share. Two years later, Belle stock crashed to a staggering 40centavos a share, from purchase price of P3.14 per share. Now they are virtually worthless! Two BILLION PESOS of the people’s investments down the drain!
While I congratulate the Sandigan Bayan judges for finding Estrada guilty of plunder, my regret is that he was never charged for his possible role in the abduction and murders of Salvador “Bubby” Dacer, Emmanuel Corbito and
Edgar Bentain.
According to members of his family, Bubby Dacer was bawled out by Estrada in Malacanang in November of 1999 shortly before he and his driver, Corbito, were abducted by members of the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) headed by Gen. Panfilo Lacson and tortured and executed. The PAOCTF soldiers who admitted killing Dacer and Corbito pointed to Col. Glenn Dumlao as their commanding officer. Before he fled to the US, Col. Dumlao pointed to Col. Cezar Mancao and Col. Michael Ray Aquino as the officers who gave him the orders. Before they could point their fingers as to who directed them, Mancao and Aquino fled to the US upon instructions of Lacson. If Lacson had been fingered by Mancao and Aquino, would he have pointed the finger to Estrada?
Edgar Bentain was a casino worker at the Casino Filipino located at the Heritage Hotel in Manila when he secretly released to the press the videotape of Estrada playing high-stakes poker with his crony, Atong Ang. The videotape was then shown on TV to the embarrassment of Estrada who ordered an investigation into who leaked the videotape. According to Ador Mawanay’s sworn testimony on August 17, 2001, PAOCTF men abducted Bentain outside the casino and immersed him with cement inside a drum and dumped his corpse in Pampanga. The leader of the PAOCTF team, he said, was Col. Michael Ray Aquino. Mawanay identified Estrada’s son, Jude, as the man he saw give a black bag containing money to Aquino as payment for the killing of Bentain.
Estrada “suffered enough”??
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