Estrada to ask only for fair trial if FPJ wins in 2004

Deposed President Joseph Estrada said yesterday he would support his old movie star buddy Fernando Poe Jr., a matinee idol like himself, if decides to run for president in the 2004 elections.

"I told him, ‘you know, you never asked anything from me when I was president. But if you become president, I’ll ask only one favor from you, give me a fair trial’," Estrada said. "I said that to him, he just smiled and laughed."

Estrada said Poe – known better by his initials, FPJ – would be a cinch to win in the elections because of his immense movie star popularity.

"You know, if my movies did well in the tills, his movies did better. He and I were rivals at one time in the movies. But I could not beat his box office record," he said.

Rumors have it that Poe – despite his repeated denials – is being wooed by the opposition to run for the presidency in 2004.

Estrada said he hoped to be eventually acquitted but not before 2004, when his term of office would have ended.

"It’s a rigged trial. I will not testify. If the court subpoenas me, then police officers can drag me there. But I will not say anything, it will be a waste of time."

The former movie star, who insists he has not resigned and claims he was forced out of office by the Supreme Court, said the Arroyo administration could not risk freeing him while he still has a claim to the presidency.

"If they acquit me now, they will have to take me back to Malacañang," Estrada told reporters in the hospital room where he is being kept in custody. "They will wait till 2004. Hopefully then, they will let me go."

Estrada, who was elected in 1998 to a six-year term, was ousted in January 2001 in a military-backed massive popular protest when his impeachment trial ended in a farce.

President Arroyo, a political foe who was then vice president, took over and she is on course to contest the 2004 polls.

Estrada is being tried for corruption and economic plunder, charges that carry the death penalty. He is accused of amassing more than P4 billion ($75 million) during his 31-month rule.

Estrada has insisted he is innocent and the trial was rigged. He has withdrawn his lawyers but the court has given him government-appointed counsel against his wishes.

"I may have committed mistakes, but corruption was not one of them," he said.

Estrada looked a shadow of his former buoyant self in the Veterans Memorial Medical Center hospital suite, where he has been held for more than a year.

He seemed to have lost weight, chain-smoked unfiltered cigarettes through a holder and talked of faith healing for his arthritic knees and of constant boredom.

But there were moments when he reverted to his pugnacious self and sly wit. Asked how his health was, the 65-year-old said: "Above my knees, I am perfect."

The Sandiganbayan had refused to allow him to seek knee surgery in the United States, saying there are qualified doctors here. Estrada said it would cost him at least $65,000 to bring in his personal physician from the United States, an American, to operate on him.

Estrada showed reporters a small sauna he had installed in his bedroom, saying using it was his only exercise. He is not allowed out and has been exempted from attending trial.