The moment of truth for Joseph Estrada came abruptly at 1 p.m last Friday, when Armed Forces Chief of Staff General Angelo Reyes and Defense Secretary Orlando Mercado informed him that the military was withdrawing its support from him. Concerned that Estrada had not fully understood the finality of the call, Reyes asked his deputy, General Jose Calimlim, to follow up the phone call with a personal visit. Calimlim, a trusted former aide-de-camp to Estrada, was a person who could perhaps coax him through pakikisama (camaraderie), the gentle pressure of "a friend, not an enemy."
When Calimlim arrived at Malacanang Palace, the President was in his office with several advisers, speaking on the phone. In a fit of anger following the call, he ordered everyone out of the office so that he could talk privately with Calimlim. "You too?" the President then said. "Everybody has forsaken me." It was clear that he had been drinking, and Calimlim observed that he was "despondent," saying at one point, "You know what I'll do? I'll just wait for one soldier to come in and kill me." Calimlim later remarked that "it was as if the whole world had collapsed on him without his knowing what hit him."
Following a series of events that were almost as fantastical as the original revolution that toppled Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, the Philippines was poised to make its fourth transition of power. By Saturday, Estrada, fighting a corruption scandal and a rancorous Senate impeachment trial, had resigned. He appeared to have the votes to survive the Senate action, but the Philippine people had seen enough. They took to the streets peacefully last week, and by week's end Estrada's 2 1/2-year rule was finished and his archrival, Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, was sworn in.
The country faces immense challenges. Even before charges were filed against Estrada, sending the peso into a death spiral, economic growth had stalled while debt had soared to record levels, throwing new IMF relief into doubt. Graft and corruption remain endemic in the Philippines, and they were focal points in Estrada's trial. Century-old demands by Muslim secessionists for an independent Mindanao had quieted at the end of the previous presidency, Fidel Ramos', but flared anew under the erratic management of the Estrada administration. But that is not all.
By the time Estrada left office, reportedly headed for exile in Australia, the country was suffering its worst crisis of confidence since the Marcos years, with its banks, stock market, regulatory agencies and legislature all tainted by the revelations disclosed during the impeachment trial. Two days before Estrada was forced to resign, his newly appointed Executive Secretary, Edgardo Angara, a respected former Cabinet Secretary, voiced hope that the crisis atmosphere would "help push through those structural reforms that in normal times are so difficult to do, so that we can prove those people wrong who say democracy can never work in the Philippines."