Karl Marx said, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

Last Wednesday, Joseph Estrada tried to repeat history when he declared he was running for president for the second time. He said his bid was “the last performance of my life.”

When he first ran for president, Estrada presented himself as the champion of the masses. To give his inauguration historical symbolism, he took his oath at Barasoain Church in Malolos, on June 30, 1998, apparently unaware that the choice of Barasoain played out the ironic contradiction between his claim as a man of the masses and the venue.

The first revolutionary Republic was inaugurated in Barasoain in 1898. The Malolos Republic was a creature of the elite-led revolution, made up of the educated Filipino upper class and middle-class principalia of the late 19th century.

It was the elite that packed the church during Estrada’s inauguration. The church was too small to hold the audience, and Estrada appeared uncomfortable in the congested space and most probably in the midst of the non-masa assembly. He delivered his speech at the Independence Grandstand in Luneta.

Nonetheless, Estrada perorated in his inaugural speech, apparently unaware, of the hollowness of his soaring rhetoric. “The common people have waited long enough for their day, to come. That day is here,” Estrada said, as though he was reciting a scripted line in one of his movies, depicting him as the hero of the underdog and underprivileged of Philippine society. He said that the “new day of the Filipino masses” had arrived and that one of their own was finally leading them.

When he took office with a strong populist accent, the Philippines was struggling to recover from the 1997 Asian financial meltdown, and emerging from the crisis less damaged than other countries in Asia. There were high expectations among the masses, the majority of the people, that the president would distribute more equitably the national wealth and lift the poor from their poverty.

Also in his inaugural, Estrada pledged to eradicate corruption, warning that his friends and relatives would not be given special favors in public transactions, and it would be futile to test his resolve.

Two years later, Estrada plunged into a corruption scandal, involving pay-offs from proceeds of illegal jueteng. The scandal triggered the impeachment of Estrada in October 2000. By January 2001, Estrada was removed from office by People Power sparked by the suppression by the Senate, acting as the impeachment tribunal, of evidence on Estrada’s bank transactions.

Filipinos were astonished by the swiftness of Estrada’s fall. Evidence produced at the impeachment trial served as the basis of criminal prosecution which led to his conviction on charges of plunder in 2007 and imprisonment. He was quickly pardoned by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Estrada makes his second bid for the presidency against the judicially documented corruption of his short-lived presidency. His first presidency is now public record, known to most Filipinos, and the record undisputedly defines him as damaged goods. He is repackaging himself with a presentation of programs and policies without changing the wrapping paper that he is still the man of the masses. He is asking for a second chance to do better without any basis for such expectations.

A few thousands of the bakya crowd that he likes to believe is his die-hard constituency came to attend his declaration of candidacy at Plaza Amado Hernandez in Moriones, Tondo. He delivered the same stale message he gave in June 1998. They cheered him although they knew he had failed them, and many of them could be poorer and more wretched today than they were in 1998.

“This is the last performance of my life and I will not fail you,” Estrada told the cheering crowed. “I swear to run in the coming elections so I can again be of service to the masses as president of the Philippines.”

If Estrada believes he can win election against the dismal record of his failed presidency, there is no iota of evidence to warrant such optimism. Opinion surveys so far put him among a batch of contenders struggling to catch up with the front runner, Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III who scored 60 percent among a field of less than 10 contenders in the September survey of the Social Weather Stations.

Estrada’s old constituency, the urban poor, are hearing the same stale and unfulfilled message, and it is hard to believe that they will continue to be deluded and be misled again in this election.

Estrada certainly made good his promise that he would declare his candidacy if he failed to unite the opposition. Despite his efforts, the opposition has remained fractured, and those in the first and second wave of runners are opposition people. The opposition men—Aquino, Sen. Manuel Villar, Sen. Francis Escudero, Vice President Noli de Castro, Estrada, Sen. Dick Gordon—are battling to eliminate one another, and they are dividing the vote among themselves, but fortunately for them, the probable administration standard-bearer, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, is rating miserably in the surveys. Estrada is being marginalized, and he looks pathetic as he continues to hold tenaciously to the illusion that the masses have kept faith with him, and that his man-of-the-masses image is still potent for mobilizing popular support.

No doubt Estrada has charisma. But his last performance is fast turning into a farce. That farce was spun out of the world of make-believe that is the movies. Estrada has lived in that world for too long.

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