Friend or faux?
Actor turned politician Joseph 'Erap' Estrada, who was ousted as president of the Philippines in 2001, is back in a new role. But will the newly installed mayor of Manila fulfil his promises to the poor, asks Raissa Robles
On his first day as mayor of the nation’s capital, deposed Philippine president Joseph “Erap” Estrada seemed to be in no hurry to meet the people who had elected him and were swarming outside his office. The day before, while being sworn in, Estrada had made a promise: “Here in Manila, the poor are the boss of Erap”.
Many, like Marina Palin, 72, had walked the three kilometres to City Hall from the poverty-stricken district of Tondo in the sweltering July heat in order to hold Estrada to the campaign pledges he and his running mate, Vice-Mayor Isko Moreno (a screen name – the former movie actor’s real name is Francisco Domagoso) made to the poor.
“I want to ask Mayor Erap for help because I was hit by a motorbike and I can’t ask the man who hit me because I pity him. He has many children,” Palin tells Post Magazine. “I’m also going to ask Vice-Mayor Isko for a cart for the fruits I sell.”
Fellow Tondo resident Luzviminda Laylay, 48, says she wants to ask “Presidente Erap” to give her back the hospital job she lost just before the elections.
The driver of a jeepney (the uniquely Filipino minibus), accompanied by his wife and child, waves around a traffic ticket, saying he was slapped with a fine of 2,000 pesos (HK$358) – which he cannot afford to pay – for arguing with a policeman. He wants “Presidente Erap” to hear his side of the story and scrap the fine.
Another man pleads to see Erap – the nickname means “friend” – because he has not been paid the 100,000-pesos bill for the medical equipment four city hospitals bought from him. An ageing movie stuntman who took a real bullet for the former action-film star when things turned ugly following the revolution of 1986, claims the mayor promised him a job.
