"If This Can Be Done to Me, Who is Safe?"

EDSA II was swift justice indeed -- as in a lynching. It repudiated the very essence of due process enshrined in the constitution. Mob rule catapulted Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to the presidency last month.

EDSA II was not a people power uprising. Rather it was hatched in the boardrooms and gated villages of Metro Manila and backed by a text-messaging generation. The masses who support me cannot afford texting facilities or go to EDSA to watch a risk-free marathon rock festival. The vactionless classes were too busy toiling for a living. The voices at EDSA didn't echo an entire nation busy at work instead of indulging the national pastime of overheated politics.

Civilization needs and depends on rules. What they call EDSA II or People Power II has set a very dangerous precedent. It has irrevocably damaged the democratic institutions that EDSA I restored in the 1986 people-backed military mutiny that ended 20 years of dictatorial rule. After EDSA II, the process of changing duly- elected leaders may depend on the mob and a few fence-sitting and ambitious generals breaking the chain of command at a crucial moment. Future leaders may be removed by a noisy minority through rallies and street protests and the withdrawal of support by the military. Predictability and stability seem even farther now than ever.

Can one imagine the Americans having such a rally at the Lincoln Memorial after the Federal Supreme Court ordered Florida not to recount the votes in the last presidential elections?

Kidnappings and killings are back. Local and foreign investors are staying in the wings uncertain as to when they will put their money in again. For what guarantee is there that there will be no EDSA III, EDSA IV, EDSA V any time the mob and the military do not get their way?

That's what EDSA II was all about: mob rule. It rendered the Senate impeachment court inutile when the prosecutors walked out after losing a democratic vote. It forced the Supreme Court to act impulsively in having Chief Justice Hilario G. Davide, Jr. administer the oath of office to the Vice-President in a situation not authorized by the Constitution as the presidency was and is not vacant.

I was, and today remain, the duly-elected President. The basis of Arroyo's oath- taking was an alleged two-paragraph letter supposedly faxed to the Supreme Court at 11:34 a.m. on January 20, 2001. Its last paragraph supposedly said she was taking over the presidency because of the "permanent disability of the President." At this writing no copy of said letter has been released by either alleged sender or recipient.

In fact, she emphatically denied on national television having written and sent the historic document that, from Day One, should have been disseminated both by the sender and the recipient. My counsel repeatedly wrote to the Supreme Court for a copy of it, to no avail, and had to file our petition for quo warranto without the benefit of having seen it.

The Chief Justice said early last January II0 that he would swear in the Vice- President only as an acting President. Her first sentence after the oath-taking said as much. That sentence was falsified the very next day.

In any case, "permanent disability" is not for Ms. Arroyo to determine. Her doctorate is in economics. The President's term may be shortened only by death, permanent disability, resignation or impeachment. Those who seized power proclaim their commitment to the Constitution and the rule of law. But, too many legal and policy issues beg and ache for answers that cannot be set aside by simply invoking the result of a failed and incomplete impeachment proceeding which formally ended without my side being heard at all.

Over the past weeks, flagrant violations of our human rights have been committed in unremitting and disturbing succession.

Our family assets have been summarily frozen, without a hearing for us. Our dollar accounts in one bank, which my wife and I opened in 1985, long before I became a senator, were put on constructive distraint in complete violation of the law on foreign currency deposits. Hold departure orders for me, relatives and several others have been issued without due process. Various charges, including multiple plunder, which carries the death penalty, have been filed with the Ombudsman. Examiners from the Bureau of Internal Revenue have been let loose to examine our book of accounts without prior notice and assessment.

They can seize all our assets, properties and bank accounts as long as they comply with the law, if that still matters to them.

I submitted myself to the impeachment proceedings in the belief that the constitution would be respected. Instead, they tried me in a one-sided political show trial before the bar of public opinion.

The prosecutors withdrew from the impeachment trial after ensuring that I could not present my side. They could not campaign too soon for the May, 2001 elections, and used a vote they had lost as an excuse. Indeed, the politicians set an impeachment deadline to coincide with the last day for filing their candidacies (Feb. 12, 2001), regardless of where the proceedings might have been. Everything was markedly personal or partisan politics.

A sitting President, notwithstanding his overwhelming electoral mandate, can now be denied his rights by an illegitimate government. What is the future of the country and of future Presidents if unconstitutional acts are legitimized or allowed to stand by the Supreme Court? The court should not have entered the political thicket. It should confine itself to being an arbiter of controversies, instead of helping start or being in the center of one. It did not notify me before or after it set the judicial machinery in motion -- without any suit having been filed before it -- to remove me from office. In closing the impeachment trial, the impeachment body did not notify me, either.

We face a constitutional crisis that impairs not just the presidency, but the rest of government and its democratic institutions. The victim of all these wanton transgressions is not just me but all Filipinos, who depend on the Constitution for the protection of their rights. The banking system has been shaken, laws have been violated and the Bill of Rights has been twisted. All these pose a grave and serious threat to the continuity and stability of the country. We must go back to the framework of constitutional democracy and the rule of law. If order is to be restored, it must begin with the Supreme Court and the legislature. I am given to understand that the Senate, as in the case of the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, "was made judge not in order to lessen the guarantees, but to insure that the accused would not be crushed by the oppressive weight of the House of Representatives. The President, no less than the lowliest citizen, is entitled to the protection of due process, and the essence of due process is fair play. To conclude that the President on trial is without guarantees that shield the meanest offender would be to render the constitution contemptible."

The "oppressive weight of the House" precisely was made to bear on the Senate on January 16, 2001 when its prosecutors walked out after losing a vote. Some members of the prosecution joined the Vice-President, two former Presidents and Church leaders and staged a people power rally at the EDSA shrine.

Some prosecutors later tried to explain their walkout. They said that they would have allowed Chief Justice Davide, as presiding officer of the impeachment court, to rule whether or not to open the controversial second envelope. Instead, Senator-judges ruled on a motion by Senate Majority Floor Leader Francisco Tatad and seconded by Senator Juan Ponce Enrile. Apparently, the prosecutors did not know that the Chief Justice, based on the Senate impeachment rules, could only decide on the issue of materiality and relevancy of a particular evidence, and not on the basis of a motion by a member of the Senate.

The Senators clearly biased against me could have raised a point of order. They did not. As was confirmed later, they thought that Senator Ramon Revilla would go with them. He did not, they lost and walked out.

Even the testimony of Ms. Clarissa Ocampo, a bank executive, was admitted only conditionally by Chief Justice Davide. The defense panel objected, simply because it had no bearing on any of the four articles of impeachment filed against me. The articles were for bribery, graft and corruption, betrayal of public trust and culpable violation of the Constitution.

Representative Feliciano Belmonte Jr., head of the eleven Prosecutors, said "that Mr. Estrada had violated the law not once, not twice, but regularly like clockwork." Defense lawyer Jose Flaminiano said the accusation of the prosecution that I had regularly so violated the law turned out to be just a litany of lies, hearsay and innuendoes. These continue today as I get hammered daily in the press on more and more false charges aired by politicians running for election in May. Our ready-aim-fire press is not known for its strong commitment to verification of the truth.

The center of the controversy was Ilocos Sur Governor Luis "Chavit" Singson, a self-confessed illegal gambling operator and beneficiary, who claimed that he funneled illegal gambling money and excise tax funds to my pockets.

Defense lawyer Estelito Mendoza asked, after Singson admitted having falsified 13 documents: "Are you to impeach the President, terminate the mandate of more than 10 million people (who voted for him) on the word of someone who has himself and cannot possibly deny that 13 times he falsified documents?"

From jueteng, the inquiry led to many other charges not contained in the articles of impeachment.

There were all sorts of mixed motives. Vice President Macapagal-Arroyo demanded my immediate resignation for obvious reasons. Jaime Cardinal Sin asserted that gambling or other evil money was not bad as long as it was intended for the poor. On the issue of jueteng, the gambling racket that started it all, my answer is simple: if I were a jueteng protector, why should I want to kill the game, in favor of a legal lottery, as my government was trying to do? Supposedly given cash, why should I launder it when its source is not traceable? Why create a paper trail? Why should I put it in the corporate and banking systems if there was any evil intention? Why is the money intact? Why would good people get involved in it if the intention was not to help a cultural minority? All these may be asked for argument's sake to test the prosecution's theory.

Due to lack of particulars and specifications, the trial, on many occasions, turned into a wild open-ended presentation of evidence by the prosecution, including the so-called "smoking-gun" of Ms. Ocampo who testified that I am the "Jose Velarde" mentioned in a trust account agreement involving 500 million pesos. Like the testimony of other prosecution witnesses, the defense questioned this statement, saying it had no bearing on any of the articles of impeachment.

I said I did not and do not own the account. There was absolutely no government money, no jueteng money, and no dirty money involved. "The testimony of Ms. Ocampo was good only for making headlines," as my then spokesman said. The issue was whether the 500 million pesos was ill-gotten or not. Chief Justice Davide ruled that the burden of proof was not on the defense but the prosecution to convince the Senator-judges that the money was tainted with fraud.

No one can deny that the prosecution and the speakers bureau of the United Opposition, many of them experts at using propaganda and the media, had been targetting me, my family and friends since I assumed the presidency on June 30, 1998. Some of them even issued statements blaming me for the bombings last December 30 that killed a number of people and injured more than 80 others. Such irresponsible statements only needlessly deepen the divide among our people.

Long before the impeachment trial began, talks of ousting me were in the air, as early as December 1999. Stratfor, supposedly a political forecasting service in Texas, ran a report that I would be removed from office before my term would expire in 2004. It said government allowed the resurgence of cronyism and corruption of the Marcos era, fueling speculations that a coup was in the offing. Then came the banner story of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a widely circulated broadsheet, highly critical of me about a report supposedly released by the World Bank that $48 million had been lost to corruption in 20 years in the Philippines.

But how could this be when I was only two years then in office? And on the issue of cronyism, why single me out when cronyism and corruption were more pervasive and damaging during previous administrations?

The ballot box remains the best gauge to decide the people's will in a democracy. That was badly compromised by the events of last month. So was due process. Can one imagine the House impeaching me, the Senate closing the impeachment trial, and the Supreme Court allowing the Vice-President to take her oath as Acting President without notifying me, before and after the event, as it were? If this can be done to me, who is safe?

On Jan. 19 I called for snap presidential polls and vowed not to contest. But this was rejected by Vice-President Arroyo for being allegedly unconstitutional. However, she violated the Constitution by the manner she took her oath. She invokes the charter when it is in her favor but treats it as a minor inconvenience when it gets in the way.

What was inaugurated last January 20 was a banana republic and time will vindicate me. In retrospect, the last paragraph of the Supreme Court resolution that paved the way for Ms. Arroyo's oath-taking at EDSA as acting President is a clear manifestation that the highest tribunal was not closing its doors to a correct interpretation of the Constitution: "This is without prejudice to the disposition of any justiciable case which may be filed by a proper party."

I swear on my father's grave that never in my entire career in public life have I taken a single centavo of taxpayer's money. This I intend to prove but I never got my day in court. Hence, I filed a quo warranto petition against Vice President Arroyo, believing that if errors were committed by the Supreme Court last January 20, those concerned meant well for the country.

However, if I win, will there be an EDSA III? Is this the way we now resolve our problems? The so-called "civil society" believes the institutions only work if they rule in favor of these agitators. If I win, I pledge that I will act in the highest national interest, including giving way to the acting President and supporting her, if personal sacrifice is called for. I fight mainly for legal and historical vindication, not to add to the divisions as the healing must begin.