A Manila anti-graft court yesterday found former president Joseph Ejercito Estrada guilty of plunder for salting away US$80 million (S$121 million) in revenues from illegal gambling during his presidency.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Estrada, 70, deposed in 2001 in favour of his vice-president Gloria Arroyo, was returned to his luxury compound outside Manila where he has lived for much of the six-year trial. Early reports indicate that he will serve out his sentence there.

I first saw Estrada in the late 1980s at a Manila cinema. In the role of Kumander Alibasbas, he single-handedly slaughtered scores of Japanese soldiers and Filipino thugs.

Over the years, as the hero of films in the local Tagalog language, he waded through buckets of synthetic blood and decapitated countless fibreglass dummies to win his way into the hearts, if perhaps not the minds, of his countrymen.

They began voting him into political office - first as a suburban mayor, then as senator and finally as president. His majority in the 1998 election was the largest in the nation's history.

A consummate ham actor, Estrada knew how to turn his film role as an ever-victorious hero of the peasantry into a political role as, well, ditto. The legislative record shows that he did very little for them. But millions loved him anyway and - in a manner that continues to threaten the country's political stability - still do.

At Manila rallies watched by some 6,000 wary soldiers and police yesterday, Estrada supporters spoke of an immediate appeal against the life sentence and promised future anti-Arroyo disturbances.

Estrada announced last year that he was no longer interested in becoming president again. Nevertheless, says Mr Francis Escudero, House of Representatives Minority Leader, employing Estrada's nickname: 'The Erap factor exists.'

Mr Escudero cites surveys that allegedly show Estrada 'still enjoys wider support and trust than GMA' (as President Arroyo is known).

Says the congressman: 'The masses still look up to him and he remains a potent and important factor.'

Mr Escudero's assessment would be more credible if he were not so conspicuously determined to enlist Estrada supporters' votes for himself at the next presidential election. This is scheduled for 2010, unless current efforts to impeach Mrs Arroyo (also for alleged corruption) are successful.

If political skills are needed to keep his cause alive, Estrada will not be found wanting. He knew, perhaps better than anyone, the rural masses' dislike for many city-dwellers, those whom he liked to call 'the Peninsulares, the intellectual snobs'.

A Manila newspaper columnist, the late Luis Beltran, coined this term for 'Filipinos overly impressed by their families' actual or imagined descent from the Iberian peninsula's colonial overlords'.

But for all Estrada's contempt for phoney neo-Spaniards, the politician did remind me of the Philippines' links with Spain via Latin America.

If only on celluloid, he did cut a convincing figure as a benevolent pistolero, the Latins' Robin Hood.

Moreover, multitudes chanting his nickname Erap - 'Eh-RAP! Eh-RAP! Eh-RAP' - produced a sound seldom heard since Argentina's shirtless yelled their approval of (president Juan) Peh-RON!

In January 2001, a determined 'people's power' protest, partly mobilised by the Catholic clergy and tacitly supported by the army, brought down Estrada's presidency. And once President Arroyo took office, he was charged with 'plunder'.

With former president Ferdinand Marcos' looting of the treasury firmly in mind, legislators passed the Philippines' Plunder Law in 1991. Steal more than 50 million pesos (then about S$1.5 million), says the law, and you face permanent disqualification from public office, along with either life imprisonment or death. The most notable signatory was one senator Estrada.

Estrada is a master of the common touch. Observe his exploitation of his semi-literacy and that nickname 'Erap'. (The word is derived from pare, Tagalog for 'mate' or 'pal', spelt - for reasons lost to history - backwards.)

Filipinos called his frequent malapropisms 'Eraptions'. The master politician (or some skilful adviser) deliberately converted this limitation into a pro-Estrada joke. He once proudly presented me with a signed copy of a best-selling anthology of them - ERAPtion: How To Speak English Without Really Trial.

Sample Eraption: Annoyed by claims that his English could not be understood, he retorted: 'From now on, I'll just speak in the binocular.'

Radio announcers and TV comedians continue to offer Eraptions. As a result, most examples are undoubtedly apocryphal. To any other politician, each Eraption might be, as Erap is reported to have said, 'yet another nail in his coughing'.

But Erap laughed along with the nation, confident that all the while he was being bound closer to Everyman.

My lasting memory of him is from a 1998 election rally in Bulacan, a rural area near Manila. As he walked towards the lectern, his left leg appeared to buckle. 'Arthritis', a supporter affectionately explained. 'It often makes Erap walk like a penguin.'

But once in place, this penguin, on the wings of a good Tagalog script, became something of an eagle. 'The elitists make fun of me,' he told the loving crowd, 'but they are really making fun of you.'

The chant from about 5,000 T-shirted farm workers, now more like a resounding drumbeat - 'Eh-RAP! Eh-RAP! Eh-RAP!' - followed him as he limped off the stage and was swept not into the limousine that most powerful Filipinos demand, but into a battered old truck.

History's verdict? No truly memorable legislation distinguished his 32 months as president. He was just a very skilful crowd-pleaser.

A great pity. A different man might have used his undoubted Ronald Reagan-like leadership gifts to pull millions out of poverty.

anthonypaul2@bigpond.com