Estrada among crowd of supporters

Chanting

00+01

Williams: A politician with a populist touch, Joseph Estrada was swept to the presidency by impoverished millions who saw him as their champion.

Singers

Crowd/singing

00+22

Williams: As a swash-buckling former movie star - Estrada’s disarmingly honest about his hard-drinking and many mistresses - flaws he celebrates even today by congratulating these teenage singers for being as sexy as the starlets he once dated.

Singing

Williams: But their song of thanks belies a President in to deep trouble. Estrada is now the centre of the deepest political crisis to hit the Philippines since the downfall of Marcos.

00+48

Estrada addresses crowd

Williams: If the claims in this scandal are true – he’s a man whose greed drove him to steal millions from people who live on as little as a dollar a day.

01+03

A scandal that’s forcing him to spend hours pleading his innocence before the rehearsed cheers of bused in crowds.

Cheers

Williams to camera

Super: Evan Williams

Williams: Right from the start, Joseph Estrada’s presidency has been dogged by concerns over his connections to cronies, underworld figures and a flamboyant lifestyle. Estrada defends his womanising, drinking and gambling by saying his life is an open book - with nothing to hide. But that lifestyle has caught up with Estrada and threatens not only his presidency, but also confidence in the economic future of his country.

01+29

Williams shares meal with Singson

Williams: And you became, if you like, the bagman for the whole…

01+55

Williams: Luis Chavit Singson is the crime world insider whose whistle-blowing threatens to bring down a president.

Singson

Singson: I’m just telling you how they make money, how corrupt this government is, how corrupt Mr Estrada is. He's been doing this ever since he was Vice-President.

02+08

Williams: Starting life as a licensed embalmer, Singson is a politician – a provincial governor -- who is also a crime boss. Constantly surrounded by bodyguards, he's a gangster whose reputation for violence has created a vast underworld empire and control of illegal gambling.

02+18

Coronel

Super: Sheila Coronel

Centre for Investigative Journalism

Coronel: Singson is what we call in the Philippines a war lord, that means a local boss. He has goons, he has guns and he controls the economic and political power in his province up in the north of the country. He is a man who seems to fistfight. You know, he's been accused of killing his political enemies. His political enemies have tried to kill him, not once, but several times. He's Al Pacino, yeah, in a Philippine context. Yeah.

02+36

Singson and Williams with briefcase

Williams: But unlike Al Pacino, Singson has broken the gangster’s golden rule - and grassed - on his biggest patron.

03+09

Williams: What did you used to use this for?

Singson: For the money! Five million -- easily fits 5 million pesos…

Williams: Singson says he personally delivered five-million Pesos - about 100-thousand US dollars - in illegal gambling profits to Estrada twice every month at the presidential palace.

Singson

Singson: He counts it.

Williams: The president?

Singson: Yes the president by bundles, five bundles if he’s busy I just show him and say the records are with Yolly.

Williams: That was how much, about five million pesos.

Singson: Every fifteen days or a total of ten million a month.

03+40

Music

Poverty stricken area

Williams: As bizarre and sad as it undoubtedly is - the money came from here - from the poor streets of the Philippines and the masses Estrada has vowed to protect.

04+13

So desperate is life, and so popular gambling, that many prefer to bet what little they have in the hope of making just a little bit more.

Railway track

And no game is more popular than the illegal numbers game - jueteng - the game Singson says made the President so much money - and it’s easy to see how.

04+45

Maganto

Maganto: Play. Okay, your number is 17 and 20.

05+00

Williams: Police General Romeo Maganto. explains how jueteng works; players bet a few cents on two out of thirty-seven numbers, then collectors take the sheets away to unknown operators.

Maganto: 25, you lost.

Railway line

Williams: Gamblers are later told if they win or lose. It’s a blatant scam, and although the small amounts hardly seem worth it - with millions betting up to three times a day - the total amounts soon add up, for the gambling lords - and if Singson is to be believed - their protector - the President.

05+20

Singson

Williams: Why do they have to give it to the President, thought, what did he promise them in return?

05+39

Singson: Protection. Nobody is – I mean it’s being tolerated.

Williams: So that there would be no police raid, no army raid?

Singson: Uh-huh.

Williams: That you would be able to operate.

Gamblers

Williams: But now the police raids have begun.

Singson: Most people engage in this kind of game. Very popular.

06+04

Williams: Just as the scandal broke, President Estrada ordered a crackdown on illegal gambling – which have so far netted only a few small time operators.

It’s hard to imagine how these minor players could be responsible for what Governor Singson says are the huge cash payments that were siphoned up to the President.

But these men are right at the bottom of the gambling pyramid in the Philippines.

Singson: It's part of the culture of our countrymen.

Estrada on billboard

Williams: Two months ago Estrada – who is seen on billboards around the country denouncing corruption – moved to deal another one of his cronies into the game.

He wanted to replace jueteng with a legal game called Bingo2Ball. The trouble was, the crony he gave the contract to is one of Singson’s underworld rivals.

06+40

Singson

Super: Luis Singson

Provincial Governor

Singson: They gave it to my political opponent whom I beat in the last election.

Williams: They gave the bingo-two-ball

Singson: Yes, it’s like adding insult to injury. They used me then they gave it to -- it was how they did it – but they gave it to my political opponent.

07+00

Singson arrives at hotel for press conference

Williams: Singson says when they tried to have him killed, he decided there was nothing more to lose, and he went public.

07+23

Singson: The governor wants to get down to brass tacks right away.

Williams: Along with the gambling charges – Singson claims he helped Estrada hold back 130-million pesos – about two and a half million US dollars – in tobacco taxes that were meant to be paid to Singson’s province.

Singson

Singson: I requested to release the funds and they requested me to help pay some of the expenses in the last election.

07+51

Williams: So you said to him, 'I want the release of the tobacco tax money' and he said 'Oh, sure.'

Singson: Sure but you can help I said of course. Ff I say no he might not release the funds.

Williams: Why should we believe that you delivered money to the president when he denies it?

Singson: I have no hidden agenda - I have everything to lose. Why should I go public? And why should I not accept their offer to me? I challenge them to sit down in a lie-detector. They don’t want to do it so that alone and they’re already lying, all of them are lying already.

08+12

Religious rally

Religious rally

08+37

Williams: In the deeply Catholic Philippines, Singson’s claims have caused a wave of moral indignation.

Church leaders say Estrada has lost the moral authority to rule, and the scandal has forced back on the public stage the people power heroes who ousted Marcos.

Corazon Aquino

Former President Corazon Aquino’s new campaign has one aim.

Aquino: I think it is my duty to lead this peaceful protest.

Williams: What's the aim, if you could put it in a nutshell, of your campaign at the moment?

Aquino: Well as I have mentioned before, I hope the president will make the supreme sacrifice and consider resignation.

09+04

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo greets supporters

Williams: If there is a Cory Aquino equivalent today - it’s this woman --

09+26

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo - the daughter of a former president - is an economist whose US-training included time as a class-mate of Bill Clinton. As an opposition party Vice-President, she resigned two weeks ago from Estrada’s cabinet.

Arroyo

Super:

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

Philippines Vice President

Arroyo: The magnitude of the corruption depicted by governor Singson was really mind boggling and really violated the sensitivities of an ordinary person who cares about any minimum degree of integrity.

09+50

Williams: But Arroyo is an ambitious politician who can smell her victory in Estrada’s defeat.

As Vice President she’s ready to take over if Estrada resigns - an outcome she’s now actively seeking by leading the loose coalition of opposition groups clamouring for his departure.

10+14

Applause

Arroyo

Williams: Many people have said to me in the past few days that in fact the campaign of opposition, the public campaign against him, will not win, because it doesn’t have a leader at the moment.

10+38

Arroyo: It didn’t, but I have been called upon to lead so here I am.

Williams: Her first job is to unify the opposition. And at a meeting to form an alternative government, she’s joined on stage by a heavy-hitter with another anti-Estrada bombshell.

Yasay

Former Securities and Exchange Commission chief Perfecto Yasay says Estrada called him four times to fix an insider trading investigation in to one of his cronies, Dante Tan.

Yasay: He calls me back after talking to the president of the Philippines stock exchange. He tells me again, 'You have to clear Dante Tan and BW in three days. I am banking on you.' That’s exactly the words of the president.

11+21

Philippines Stock Exchange

Williams: Yasay refused the presidential direction and resigned -- the market immediately lost a third of its value.

Super:

Perfecto Yasay

Fmr Chair, Securities Commission

Yasay: The president violated and broke the law by one, impinging on the independence of the SEC, which is clearly safeguarded by the law, and two, giving a direct order to the chairman to the prejudice of the interests of the government. And that’s a very serious violation of the anti-graft law.

11+48

Coronel

Coronel: Previous scandals, such as insider manipulation in the stock exchange are difficult to understand, but this one is very easy to understand. The President gets a cut from illegal gambling money, and the fact that the allegations have been made by an insider - someone who has intimate knowledge of the workings of the Presidential palace, someone who has admitted to all night mah jong and drinking parties with the President, lends these charges credibility.

12+12

Manila suburb

Williams: To find out why Estrada might want the cash - you only have to travel to the tree-lined avenues of Manila’s most salubrious suburbs.

12+44

And as we found, filming these houses is not welcome. The reason - each of Estrada’s six known mistresses lives in one.

Coronel

Coronel: He managed to convince people that, yeah, you're right, why are we making so much fuss about a man who has, God knows, seven wives? Because he says no one is complaining, none of my wives are, why should you complain. He used to make jokes like that. And we found it funny and we let him get away with it. But suddenly we’re going back to the real issue here which is the issue of character. Whether this man has the character to govern a country.

13+11

Williams: Sheila Coronal investigated Estrada’s wealth. She found that in the 28 months since becoming president, Estrada has used a network of associates to accumulate property worth 20 million US dollars.

Coronel

Coronel: The key anomaly seems to be the accumulation of so much corporate wealth, and so much land and houses cannot be legitimately explained by what the president declares as his income. And we do not know of any legitimate business that the president has been engaged in that can explain how he accumulated that much money.

13+51

Casino video

Williams: Estrada’s made no secret of his profligate ways and shady mates.

Gambling with cronies – as seen in this 1996 casino tape – includes regular million-dollar mah jong sessions. But unable to ignore the growing gravity of the claims against him Estrada had to act.

14+10

Estrada

Estrada: We must uphold the spirit of the constitution and the process it provides.

14+29

Williams: He agreed to open his property ownership to investigation, remove family from directorships and scrap a few tainted deals. But that’s as far as he’d go.

Estrada: A duly elected president cannon abandon the people's will on the mere basis of what is obviously a politically motivated hatchet job.

14+47

Williams: But to many, that's just missing the point.

Senate hearing

Committee member: The initiation of impeachment, your committee's know, is a function of the house.

15+

Williams: The Senate has now decided to hold an impeachment hearing. If found guilty the President would be sacked and could face criminal proceedings.

Estrada has a senate majority - but in a senate committee investigating the case - even witnesses for Estrada deliver evidence against him.

Yolanda crying at hearing

Yolanda: [in Tagalog]

Williams: Driven to tears - and into a wheelchair - by the case, Yolanda Ricaforte is the woman Singson claims kept the books for Estrada’s ill-gotten gambling gains.

After being subpoenaed to appear, Ricaforte supposedly suffered a life-threatening attack of high-blood pressure and fears for her safety.

Yolanda: I was afraid for my family and myself because I know that governor Singson is a powerful man.

15+57

Williams: Ricaforte admits she did give 200-million pesos of Singson’s money to President Estrada’s lawyer, but says she didn’t know where the money came from.

Estrada greets supporters

Williams: The only man with all the answers says he will answer all the charges when he decides it’s the appropriate time.

Denying all charges, he instead says this is a class-war - between his working class battlers and the traditional elite.

16+22

Estrada

Williams: They're very serious allegations, sir, very serious allegations of your corruption. Will you resign?

Estrada: Why would I resign, am I guilty?

Williams: I'm not sure, sir, did you take the money?

Estrada: Of course not. Why would I take that money.

Williams: A lot of people do believe him, don't they? It's a bit of a problem for you politically.

16+39

Estrada: How can you believe a confessed criminal. Even a criminal is given a day in court.

Williams: Buffeted but unbowed, Estrada refuses to see the wider problem he’s creating.

The stock market is in free-fall - the peso at record lows - the Philippines economy is being crippled by a crisis of confidence.

To stem the tide, his would be successors are talking off the gloves.

17+08

Arroyo

Arroyo: The scandals are getting more, the outrage is getting more, the proof is getting stronger, the magnitudes are getting bigger.

17+32

So while I would not say I am convinced beyond doubt, because I want to give him the benefit of the doubt, the tendency is to believe, because there is so much corroborating evidence.

17+43

Demonstration

Chanting

Williams: Estrada claims the nation’s masses are still with him - that the whole mess is orchestrated by the elite to oust the people’s man from power.

But if the claims prove true, the people may demand more than just a dignified resignation from the actor they trusted with their future.

18+07

Credits:

Reporter: Evan Williams

Camera: Geoffrey Lye

Editor: Garth Thomas

Producer: Virginia Moncrief