Estrada on Ice

A year ago, he ruled his nation, presided at the nexus of corruption, greed, vanity and perfidy that is the right of a despotic head of state. He was evicted from powerunconstitutionally he is eager to remind youby the sort of populist movement that has become the Philippine way of disposing of such autocrats. And now, his suzerainty over even this little hospital room, these grubby pieces of furniture and ancient hospital beds, is only at the sufferance of the general in charge of Veteran's Memorial Medical Center.

It has been a precipitous fall for Joseph ("Erap") Estrada,...