Deposed president Joseph "Erap" Estrada, convicted for plunder, is free.
And this country definitely ain't.
After six and a half years of languishing at his resthouse in Tanay (hahaha... did you really think he was a prisoner?), Erap is granted pardon by his former vice-president. All he had to do was to withdraw his appeal for reconsideration, and drop all plans to seek public office.
With all the influence he wields, does Erap really need an elective position to get what he wants?
There's no other way to think about this. Aside from declaring another state of emergency, Gloria needs to do all that she can to redirect the unwanted attention she has been getting.
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has her dirty hands full of controversy: the broadband fiasco, the bribery AKA as financial assistance, and the deadly Glorietta bombing.
And what better way to deviate all the attention, all the boos and the insults thrown her way, than to do the unthinkable, the unforgivable?
We might as well dissolve the Sandiganbayan, which found Erap guilty beyond reasonable doubt of plundering this poor country. Throw in the dissolution of the Presidential Commission on Good Government (tasked with recovering the ill-gotten Marcos wealth), considering that the Marcoses are back in power after all the pillaging they've done.
