Second wind for Mayor Erap

He may not have completed his six-year term at Malacañang Palace but former President, now Mayor of the city of Manila, Joseph “Erap” Estrada finds fulfillment in seeing his dreams of improving the plight of the “masang” Pilipino, at least is happening at the country’s capital city.

In his state of the city address (SOCA) to mark the inaugural session of the city council yesterday, Mayor Estrada asked the 36 councilors to set aside their political colors. Mayor Estrada impressed upon them Manilenos depend on their leadership to turn around the city out of chaos, decay and poverty that were depicted about the country’s capital city in Dan Brown’s novel “Inferno” where Manila was described as the “gates of hell.”

Mayor Estrada prodded the city council to cross party lines to support the priority thrusts of his “Sulong Maynila” (roughly translated: moving forward the city of Manila). Headed by his own political party Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP), Mayor Estrada formed a coalition called “Asenso Manileno” and carries the battle cry: “Manila, Forward Ever; Backward Never.”

The Mayor reiterated his favorite mantra that they must serve and work for the greater good for the greater number of the more than two million Manilenos.

To this end, he spelled out to the Manila councilors his administration’s priorities on his second term in office.

The Manila city council is headed by Vice Mayor, Honey Lacuna whom Estrada took in as running mate, she being on her third and last term as councilor from the 4th district of Manila (Sampaloc).

The city council is the so-called “little congress” because they function as the legislative body. The Vice Mayor presides the body and the councilors act as lawmakers and pass local ordinances and the annual budget of City Hall run by the Mayor.

Mayor Estrada beat comebacking Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim and Manila Congressman Amado Bagatsing in the last May 9 elections. It was actually a second defeat of Lim to Estrada. He edged out Lim with just more than 6,000 votes margin.

Lim vowed to question Mayor Estrada’s proclamation. To date though, there is still no formal protest filed before any courts nor at the Commission on Elections (Comelec). To obviously spite Lim, Mayor Estrada declared his erstwhile Cabinet member will not win against him on a third round mayoral race in the coming May 2019 elections.

Mayor Estrada made the declaration during our weekly breakfast forum at the Kapihan sa Manila Bay last May 18, or a few days after he and Lacuna were officially proclaimed winners. Although he managed to defeat his opponents, Estrada rued, it paled in comparison when he won by a landslide over Lim during the May 2010 elections. He won by more than 30,000 votes margin when, in fact, he had done nothing yet for the Manilenos.

Now serving his second term as mayor, Estrada hoped to accomplish much more than what he was able to chalk up during his first term. And to think, he pointed out, he was able to undertake these projects even as he inherited a heavily indebted City Hall.

During his first term in office from 2013-2016, Mayor Estrada and the city council were able to find ways to pay Manila’s debts of some P5.5 billion of unpaid electric and water bills, and unremitted allowances of policemen.

Given the financial turnaround of the city government coffers, he said, new equipment such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine was acquired for the Ospital ng Maynila and the Manila Dialysis Center in Delpan to serve indigent patients from Manila for free.

The city government’s annual budget now finances feeding program consisting of nutribun and milk for every day breakfast of 7,500 “malnourished” public elementary pupils in Manila.

Despite financial constraints, Mayor Estrada cited, he was able to implement other projects, many of which were on “turn-key” projects like the upgrading of public markets in Quiapo, San Andres and Trabajo.

Estrada cited “turn-key” projects are the forerunners of the Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) that was signed into law during the administration of former President Fidel Ramos. When former President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III assumed office at Malacanang, Estrada said, they came up with their own PPP, or Public-Private Partnership projects.

When he was still the Mayor of San Juan, Estrada recalled, he first used the “turn-key” scheme in the construction of a modern public market for San Juan. Under this “turn-key” scheme, San Juan did not spend a single centavo for the construction of a three-floor Agora market complex in the 1960s. The San Juan municipality earned not only real estate taxes but also collected more business taxes  from stallholders and store lessors at Agora complex. 

The municipality of San Juan, as the owner of land where Agora was put up, leased it to the private contractor for 25 years. The Agora Complex became not only a bustling market for wet and dry goods but it also housed movie theaters and other public attractions.

It became a model project for other local government units. It won for then San Juan Mayor Estrada an award as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men in 1969.

The real estate property is now back to the ownership of San Juan, already a city currently under the helm of Mayor Guia Gomez. She is one of the several women who has a child with Estrada – Senator JV Ejercito.

For 16 years, he was Mayor of San Juan until it was cut short by the EDSA People Power Revolution in February 1986. Estrada subsequently run and won as Senator and later as Vice President in 1992. He won by a landslide victory as President in 1998. But EDSA-2 in January  2001 unceremoniously removed him from the presidency.

He nearly made a successful comeback bid to the presidency during the May 2010 election. He came in close second to President Aquino.

Turning nostalgic, the 79-year-old Mayor of Manila vows to restore the country’s capital city to its premier title as the so-called “Pearl of the Orient Seas.” His next three years in office as mayor of Manila, however, may not be enough time to achieve his dream.

During his first term in office, Mayor Estrada promised to accomplish so much, saying it is his “last hurrah” in his career as a public servant. Getting a second wind, Mayor Estrada now trains his sight for one more term in office to complete his dream for Manila.