Estrada to run in 2010 presidential polls

Manila: Party mates confirmed the decision of former President Joseph Estrada to run in the 2010 presidential polls despite the possibility of being barred following a condition for his pardon not to seek public office again after his conviction of graft in 2007, TV reports said.

“I believe it is already a done deal," Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, chairman emeritus of Estrada's Force of Filipino Masses Party (PMP) said in a TV interview.
"Everybody is a close rival of Erap (Estrada’s nickname)," said Enrile, adding, “Only Estrada can divulge the date of the official announcement of his plan.”

Sources said Estrada would dramatically formalise his plan in a church in Tondo, a depressed area, on October 21.

Margaux Salcedo, spokesperson, said Estrada would soon formalise his decision, adding the former leader has remained busy giving relief assistance to the victims of typhoons Ketsana and Parma in vote-rich areas such as Metro Manila, northern and southern Luzon.

Party sources said that Estrada's running mate would be Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay.
“Yes, it is,” Senate President Pro Tempore Jose "Jinggoy" Estrada also said on TV about the plan of the two major oppositionists in 2010.

“They’re like a good breed of cock fighters,” said Enrile in assessing the strength of the Estrada-Binay tandem.

“In this election, only the strong wins,” explained Enrile.

Binay, president of PDP-Fight of the United Opposition (UNO), could get votes for him and Estrada in northern Luzon, said Enrile.

Although Estrada was ousted in 2001 by a military-backed people’s protests that were launched by those who were angry at the abrupt ending of his impeachment trial in the Senate in late 2000, he has remained hugely popular among the poor, which represents 60 percent of the Philippines’ 80 million population.

After his conviction of $ 78 million plunder at the Sandiganbayan, the anti graft court, President Gloria Arroyo pardoned him. One of the conditions was for him not to run for public office again.
Earlier, Estrada said he would run for president if the country’s four opposition parties could not unite for a common candidate. He claimed that the six-year Constitutional ban on an incumbent president should not apply to him because he did not finish his term which began in 1998. He stayed in office only for three years.

Surveys have shown that Estrada remained the country’s third most popular candidates.
Opposition and former Senate president Manny Villar, the presidential candidate of the Nationalista Party, has been topping popular surveys. Sources said that he is wooing Vice President Noli de Castro as his party’s vice presidential candidate in 2010.

De Castro, like Estrada, has been ranked as the third most popular candidates in recent surveys.
Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, son of former president Corazon Aquino, the newly anointed presidential candidate of Liberal Party, another opposition party, has already surpassed the popularity ratings of Villar and Estrada. This claim has yet to be done on a national survey by the country’s two private pollsters.

Aquino’s running mate, Senator Mar Roxas has ranked fourth and fifth among all other presidential and vice presidential candidates.

Another opposition party, the Nationalist People's Coalition (NPC), has been rooting for Senators Francis Escudero and Loren legarda as presidential and vice presidential camndidates. They, too, have high popularity ratings.

Binay, however, has shown poor popularity ratings in recent polls.

Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, chosen as the presidential candidate of one faction of the ruling party Lakas, remained one of the most unpopular candidates.

The other faction of the ruling Lakas party has been asking Vice President de Castro to be a presidential candidate. But sources said he might join Villar.