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Joseph Estrada’s passion nowadays is not the
overthrow of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Or joining her
government to help fight poverty, as suggested by Cerge Remonde.
Still savoring his newfound
freedom after being given executive clemency, the ousted former
president convicted for plunder is launching what he calls a
“white revolution,” the propagation of carabaos using a blend of
the native carabao and the Bulgarian buffalo. The Bulgarian buffalo
is supposed to produce eight times more milk than the Philippine
carabao.
Erap believes carabao’s milk is
key to solving the malnutrition problem of Filipino kids. He recalls
that during the 1960s and 1970s, public school pupils were given
milk free, courtesy of the United States government.
He notes that nowadays, the
children of the poor lag behind dismally in terms of nutrition and
mental development, compared with the children of rich parents.
“The children of the rich are sent to pre-school, pre and kinder
before they go to elementary before going to Grade One. The children
of the poor go straight to Grade One and, thus, are behind by at
least three years.” Erap’s simple solution: Make the poor kids
drink carabao’s milk.
The Senate Economic Planning
Office (SEPO) estimates there were 3.67 million children, five years
and below, who were underweight, and another 3.07 million, six to
ten years old, who are underweight, for a total of 6.68 million.
That was in 2001. Today, the number of underweight children because
of malnutrition could easily be more than 7.56 million. SEPO says it
will take 50 years to eradicate undernutrition.
Erap plans to travel by land in
the coming weeks to Muñoz, Nueva Ecija, for the Philippine Carabao
Center, a government agency set up using his pork barrel money as a
senator. As a senator, Estrada authored only one law, “An Act
Creating the Philippine Carabao Center to Propagate and Promote the
Philippine Carabao and for Other Purposes” of 1992.
Going out of town will also be a
good opportunity for Erap to savor the rural air. “Since my
incarceration, I have never been to the countryside,” he rues.
Meanwhile, expect a bruising
political fight between Estrada and another ex-president, Fidel V.
Ramos. It is a duel between the victim of People Power and the
instigator of People Power, between a president elected with the
biggest electoral margin and a president elected with the thinnest
of margin in Philippine history, between a populist leader and a
rightist general.
When President Arroyo granted
Estrada absolute pardon, Ramos was among the most strident voices in
the opposition. The West Point-trained general even hinted of a
reaction from the military.
Arroyo is surrounded by so-called
“Ramos generals” led by a powerful troika composed of Executive
Secretary Eduardo Ermita, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen.
Hermogenes Esperon, and Philippine National Police Director
General Avelino Razon. These generals owe the breaks in their
careers in large measure to Ramos who helped nurture them on their
way to the top.
Not surprisingly, or perhaps
surprisingly, Generals Ermita, Esperon and Razon have not been among
the most enthusiastic over the absolute pardon given by their
commander in chief to Estrada.
Jun Esperon took over as AFP
chief on July 21, 2006. A Pangasinense, he was the deputy
Presidential Security Group commander of President Ramos and was
also Arroyo’s PSG chief. She has told him to “destroy the armed
capability of the CPP-New People’s Army, remove their logistics
bases, and dismantle their support networks.”
Will the two Es (Ermita and
Esperon) and two Rs (Ramos and Razon) move in on President Arroyo
and make her meet the fate that befell Estrada?
My personal estimate is that they
won’t, especially with a presidential election campaign already
underway in earnest.
In the event of a coup, however,
President Arroyo can rely on an unexpected ally—Estrada. Citizen
Erap says he won’t join calls for a junta to replace Mrs. Arroyo.
That junta, it is said, is to be led by Chief Justice Reynato Puno,
the author of the “constructive resignation” theory that
legitimized Estrada’s ouster in January 2001.
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