By CARLOS H. CONDE
The New York Times
Published: October 26, 2007
MANILA, Oct. 25 — President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines has pardoned former president Joseph Estrada, who was convicted last month of corruption charges, her spokesman said today.
Mrs. Arroyo’s decision to sign the pardon was made after taking into consideration that Mr. Estrada, who was sentenced by an anti-graft court to a maximum of 40 years in prison for taking bribes and kickbacks during his presidency, had already spent the past six and a half years under house arrest and that he had publicly pledged that he would “no longer seek any elective position or office, according to the spokesman, Ignacio Bunye.” The executive clemency, he said, is in line with the government’s policy to release inmates who are 70 or older. Mr. Estrada is 70.
The pardon restores Mr. Estrada’s civil and political rights, although the court’s orders that he forfeit a mansion and more than $15.5 million he stole while in office “remain in force and in full,” Mr. Bunye said.
Mr. Estrada, who has remained under house arrest at his villa in Rizal Province just outside Manila while appealing his conviction, could be released as early as noon Friday, the spokesman said.
Some critics of the government, particularly those who had been active in the mass protests that led to Mr. Estrada’s ouster in 2001 after his impeachment on corruption charges, lambasted the pardon as a possible attempt by the Arroyo administration to quell accusations of its own corruption.
“The motive for granting the pardon is utterly self-serving of Mrs. Arroyo,” said Renato Reyes, secretary general of the leftist group Bayan, which has led protests against both the Estrada and Arroyo governments.
Mr. Reyes noted that the pardon was announced only hours after a businessman, Jose de Venecia 3rd, testified at a Senate investigation that the president’s husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo, would have made $70 million in kickbacks from a multimillion-dollar broadband contract between the government and the Chinese company ZTE.
Mr. Arroyo, in a statement today, vehemently denied the allegation, calling it part of Mr. de Venecia’s “defamation” campaign against him. Mr. de Venecia lost out in the bidding for the contract, which the president canceled in the wake of Mr. de Venecia’s charges.
The scandal has further damaged the president’s popularity, which has sunk to its lowest levels since she was accused of manipulating the 2004 elections. Mr. Estrada, a former movie actor, remains popular and is still considered a key leader of the opposition to Mrs. Arroyo, his former vice president. She joined in the movement to remove him from office in 2001.
In recent days, as speculation mounted that a pardon might be in the works, critics and analysts argued a pardon for Estrada could set back the country’s anti-corruption efforts. On Wednesday, Dennis Villa-Ignacio, the special prosecutor for the anti-graft court, told reporters that there would have to be “substantial incarceration” before any convict could be pardoned.
But opinion surveys conducted by the Manila pollster Social Weather Stations found the public overwhelmingly in favor of Mr. Estrada’s pardon. The same surveys indicated that Mr. Estrada was decidedly more popular and credible than Arroyo.
“The executive clemency granted is a clear sign, not of mercifulness on her part, but of weakness in her rule, and it smacks of political pragmatism, a survival instinct for her dying regime,” said Prestoline Suyat, spokesman of the May First Movement, a labor group that was a key player in the anti-Estrada protests.
Rufus Rodriguez, a congressman who is also a spokesman for Mr. Estrada’s political party, denied that Mr. Estrada had reached a deal with Arroyo.
“I believe these groups are putting their personal interests above those of the country’s and this is not the time for politics of personalities,” he said in a statement Thursday, before the pardon was announced. “We have to do what we can to unite our people, and we believe the grant of executive pardon to president Estrada will bring genuine peace and reconciliation to our country.”
Ferdinand Ramos, a spokesman for Mr. Estrada, said this afternoon that the first thing Mr. Estrada would do once free is to visit San Juan City, where he first entered politics as mayor, and see his ailing mother.
