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Convicted of plunder in 2004, Joseph Estrada was pardoned in 2007, after a public declaration that he would no longer run for any elective office.

But that was then. Since early this year Estrada has been saying that he might seek in 2010 the presidency he lost to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2001, when the second People Power uprising known as EDSA 2 removed him from office. He’s refused to say if he will indeed run next year, but Estrada recently bought not only two helicopters, but also, says his friend and political ally Juan Ponce Enrile, a private jet and 20 vans. He’s preparing for the 2010 campaign, says Enrile: Estrada will run next year.

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Walter Lippmann, who was the most respected figure in US journalism for about half of the 20th century, used the term “the manufacture of consent” in the 1920s to describe how people can be made to decide the way their alleged betters want them to, or think they should.

Ordinary folk are supposed to make the decisions in a democracy, but they don’t always make the best ones, given the vast confusion created by contending claims in modern societies.

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Most Filipinos think that, as the expression from US political lore goes, Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is so unpopular she couldn’t win an election as a dog-catcher. Her numbers validate that view, the most recent being a whopping 46 percent disapproval grade and a 48 percent mistrust rating, according to Pulse Asia. If her numbers were any lower she could shake hands with the devil. As ratings go these numbers favorably compare only with those of the late Idi Amin when he was president of Uganda; not even the much-despised George W. Bush was as mistrusted.

No matter. Apparently Mrs. Arroyo thinks she can win an election – but not as president, which in 2004 she amply demonstrated she couldn’t, but as a congresswoman in the Second District of Pampanga, of which the Macapagal hometown, Lubao, is a part.

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Speaking through a joint statement, several opposition groups warned the other day that an “Arroyo dictatorship” could follow the approval of House Resolution 1109 .

Their fears, said the United Opposition, Gabriela, Bayan, and Gloria Step Down Movement, among others, were not groundless, given the country’s experience with the government of Ferdinand Marcos, who managed to establish a dictatorship in 1972 by placing the entire country under martial law.

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If he’s serious about it, Makati Congressman Teodoro Locsin Jr.’s bill amending the libel law is something journalists should be able live with, even if only temporarily.

Locsin’s amendment to Article 354 of the Revised Penal code, which defines libel and punishes it with prison terms, would make voluntary publication of a reply from someone who believes himself aggrieved by the media — or the media offender’s retraction of any suggestion or implication of wrongdoing — a guarantee against being sued for libel.

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Only a people with self-confidence issues and a massive inferiority complex are as touchy as Filipinos. And only a political class that serves no purpose other than to amuse them and to pander to their worst instincts 24/7 reacts as quickly to every joke uttered in the planet that has the remotest reference to these isles of absurdity.

In a reprise of the teacup storm over a column by a Hongkong hack who said the Philippines was “a nation of servants,” some Filipinos are beside themselves over Alec Baldwin’s tongue-in-cheek threat to import a Filipina mail order bride who can bear his children. Baldwin made the remark while a guest in TV’s The Late Show with David Letterman.

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I’m sure they didn’t consult each other. But in an uncanny demonstration of the truth that regime minds think alike, within two days of each other the Speaker of the House and the Secretary of Justice used the same metaphor in dismissing Philip Alston’s April 29, 2009 follow- up report to the UN Human Rights Council.

On May 10, a day after the 2009 report was made public, Prospero Nograles dismissed a call from some party list members of Congress to expel retired general Jovito Palparan from the House of Representatives, and urged them to instead look into the extra- judicial killings (EJK) in Davao.

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