VP Joseph Estrada, PACC chief

Credible opinion polls earned for VP Estrada a performance rating of 85 percent, higher in fact than the sitting president Fidel Ramos.

Joseph Ejercito Estrada, who won as Vice-President in 1992 under a different political affiliation from elected President Fidel Ramos, was tasked by the latter as Presidential Adviser on Crime Prevention and Law Enforcement with a Cabinet rank and served concurrently as chairman of the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC). As PACC chairman, he was also a member of the National Security Council.

As anti-crime czar, VP Erap employed his experience in law enforcement culled from his stint as mayor of San Juan. He had a mark for disciplining his own local police, but was well-loved by the same, because during his term as mayor, San Juan police were the highest paid!

The cinematic roles he played mostly about crime and law enforcement filled his dispositions to what an anti-criminality campaign was all about.

Hence, during his term as anti-crime czar during the Ramos’ presidency, he listed down notable accomplishments against kidnappers, which was the bane for peace and order and the bloom for KFR (kidnap for ransom) during that era. He dismantled bank robbery syndicates and undressed the “hoodlums in uniform (police scalawags),” “hoodlums in robes (bribed justices)” and illegal recruiters.

As far as the drug problem was concerned, he funded the Philippine Drug Abuse Resistance Education (PhilDARE) Program in 1993, to address the growing problem of drug abuse among the youth.

Credible opinion polls earned for VP Estrada a performance rating of 85 percent, higher in fact than the sitting president Fidel Ramos.

And since, he seemingly was on his way to become the next president, because of his exceedingly high popularity ratings, politics had to grip a hand and Malacañang had to clip his wings by issuing Executive Order 221, stripping him and PACC of its operational control over its task forces.

Erap resigned as PACC chairman on 4 June 1997.

Obviously, his stint as anti-crime czar helped catapult him to the presidency with one of the biggest majority votes in the history of Philippine elections.

For VP Leni Robredo, however, who unexpectedly accepted the challenge to be the anti-drug czarina of the country, it would be a totally different setting.

VP Leni Robredo’s appointment from the President comes from a sardonic vantage point, namely, “political’ as she surmises.

For boisterous spokesman Salvador Panelo, the appointment could be her ladder to the presidency. On the contrary, the “yellow” allies smell a booby trap to totally destroy her chances in 2022.

This administration is bent on making sure that VP Leni would end up in shame and frustration for not delivering the expected output as drug czarina; in short, a total failure. And so with her ambitions, too.

Besides, PDEA chief and co-chairman Aaron Aquino may be accurate in stating that VP Leni Robredo may just be an “ugly duckling” on a lake full of experts in the field of drug busting.

Well, she accepted the challenge amid a counter-challenge that she would not budge an inch in her anti-thesis over the drug campaign paradigm promoted by the Duterte administration. And she arrogantly wrangles over her taking a different path other than that of what the Duterte administration mandates, such as the alleged “extrajudicial killings” and abuse of police power.

However, her hopes of being transformed into a “swan in the lake” may just be a fairy tale.

For VP Estrada, it wasn’t a fairy tale. Hailed as one of the Three Most Outstanding Senators in 1992, he was on his way unstoppably to the top political post; and being the chief crime czar, obviously, sealed that fate.