PHILIPPINES: Estrada pardon could lead to President's fall
Updated
Philippines president Joseph Estrada has received a formal pardon after being sentenced to life imprisonment six weeks ago for plunder. But many experts warn that by removing Joseph Estrada from the picture, President Arroyo may very well have sealed her own political fate.
Presenter: Linda LoPresti
Speakers: Philippines political commentator Nelson Navarro
NAVARRO: He should not have been pardoned, he's just been convicted, it's barely a month since he has been convicted of a very serious crime that we saw had him overthrown from power. And it's really a travesty of justice, pardoned by the same President who tried him in court and found him guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment.
LOPRESTI: Well Gloria Arroyo says that the reasons why she pardoned him were one, his age, that is he's 72, that he's been under detention for six years, and thirdly that he's publicly committed to no longer seeking elective office. Are these all valid reasons?
NAVARRO: No I think the principle is her own political survival. She has determined that at this point in her very shaky presidency she needs Joseph Estrada perhaps, and Joseph Estrada needs her to be able to get himself out of jail. It's really an arrangement, it's a marriage of political convenience. Very strange bedfellows, but they're in bed anyway.
LOPRESTI: Well if they are in bed together, how does the political expediency of the pardon save her beleaguered presidency?
NAVARRO: It's just for the short term. I mean like all marriages of convenience, in the immediate aftermath they wish to live happily ever after but I doubt that they will live happily ever after. Because you know enemies are often consolidating, I mean it's like musical chairs, your enemy yesterday is today your friend, and yesterday's friend is today's enemy. So she must be bothered, bewildered and bewitched.
LOPRESTI: Do you think then she's overvalued the Estrada factor as a key to her political salvation, even in the short term?
NAVARRO: Yeah I think it's very overvalued because he needs her to pardon him because no other president of the Philippines could pardon him. And what he does from here on all depends on whether Gloria is going to sink. I don't think he would throw a lifesaver to her, I think he would want her to sink in the Pacific Ocean.
LOPRESTI: Do you believe him when he says that he's publicly committed to no longer seeking elective office?
NAVARRO: No, but he had a condition though, unless the people want me, the arrogance to that! They don't like it, the people say, but what can they do? They're just serving the people, the people can't live without them.
LOPRESTI: But do the people want Joseph Estrada, it doesn't seem like he's had much public support?
NAVARRO: Well he has a constituency, I mean it's roughly estimated around 30, 35 per cent. People who are desperately poor need champions and Joseph Estrada you know he was a movie star. So the headlines may have changed, but I think it will go back to what it was because she's offended too many people, she has committed too many sins, and people have smelt blood already, they feel one more time and this time she'll get it. Of course she's like a cat, she must have nine lives. And I think she's on her sixth or seventh, so two more to go.
LOPRESTI: Do you believe that in awarding this pardon to Joseph Estrada she has in a sense sealed her fate, that it may actually backfire on her?
NAVARRO: Yeah, it's like Gerald Ford pardoning Richard Nixon. Gloria is just buying time with her pardon, it has particularly saved her from the ignominy from that judgement of yesterday, and hoping that the next president will also pardon her. By setting an example, she's now hoping that Estrada might become again the next president. He can run again, so it's case of I pardon you, you pardon me, you know.
