Estrada battles to save presidency

"My term of office will end in June 2004, you gave me that mandate…I will never resign," Estrada told people in a poor Manila neighbourhood last weekend.

But analysts said the latest scandal may have mortally wounded the presidency, especially as clergymen have called for his resignation.

"I think certainly that’s an option," said executive director Guillermo Luz of the prestigious Makati Business Club told Reuters, when asked if Estrada’s resignation was a possibility.

"That’s a scenario allowable under our constitution," he said.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper said in a recent editorial: "The (Church’s) resignation call accelerated further the political disintegration of the Estrada administration.

"Some say only a change in government can restore confidence and avert economic collapse."

Few political fortunes would fall so quickly. But from the start, the road for him was a rocky one. A series of missteps early in his term prompted one newspaper to call the presidential palace "a chamber of horrors."

One of his early blunders was a plan to bury the preserved corpse of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in Manila’s Heroes Cemetery. Estrada backed down after howls of protest from human rights and church groups.

Late in 1998, he called for constitutional amendments to remove provisions deterring the entry of foreign investors.

But church leaders suspected the move was a ploy to remove a provision limiting a president to one six-year term. Big protests forced Estrada to scrap the plan.

In July last year, Estrada found himself at the centre of a storm when then Securities and Exchange Commission chief, Perfecto Yasay, accused him of pressuring the commission to clear a friend of involvement in an alleged price rigging scandal in Manila’s stock market.

Estrada denied the allegation. An investigation into the affair is continuing.

As his popularity rating dropped and the economy stuttered, Estrada reorganised his cabinet and brought in respected economists but controversies continued.

In March this year, Estrada sacked his newly appointed presidential chief of staff, Aprodicio Laquian, after he suggested policy decisions were made during drinking bouts at the presidential palace.

A month later, Muslim rebels seized 21 mostly foreign hostages from a Malaysian dive resort and spirited them to the southern Philippine island of Jolo. The abduction triggered a months-long hostage crisis that embarrassed the already embattled Estrada administration.

All but one of the hostages were released after payment of huge ransoms. But the rebels mounted another raid on a Malaysian island and took more hostages.

In May 1998, an avalanche of votes swept Estrada to power by the biggest margin ever in a free presidential election in Philippine history.

It was a stunning victory for a confessed womaniser and college dropout who the business elite and the conservative Roman Catholic church had dismissed as unfit to govern.

One newspaper said Estrada had fathered a total of 10 children by different women since his days as a film star. Estrada did not dispute the report.

Born to a well-to-do Manila family on April 19, 1937, Estrada shot to movie stardom at 24 when he played the role of a fugitive from the law who fights for the oppressed.

Soon, everyone was calling him Erap — for pare spelt backwards, meaning "pal".

Estrada entered politics in 1969 when he was elected mayor of Manila’s San Juan town. He kept the post for 17 years, was elected senator in 1987 and in 1992, became vice-president.

Upon his election, Estrada said his presidency would be "the greatest performance" of his life.