How the world’s ‘Eraps’ fell from power, and slid to notoriety

Ousted President Joseph Estrada has joined the list of heads of state who, their supporters had believed, could lick poverty but later turned into symbols of corruption and abuse of power. Estrada is not the only leader who was ousted for allegedly enriching oneself using public funds. At least nine other heads of state were ousted in the past two decades, some through impeachment proceedings, some forced out of, while the others resigned, from office. Asia’s Estrada: Moo-hyun, Thaksin Before South Korea’s Roh Moo-hyun and Thailand’s Thaksin Shinawatra met their tragic political fates, Estrada was impeached, and later ousted through a popular uprising. On November 13, 2000, Estrada was impeached by the House of Representatives on charges of bribery, graft and corruption, betrayal of public trust and culpable violation of the Constitution. On April 25, 2001, Estrada was arrested after he was charged of four counts of plunder worth P4.097 billion and minor counts of perjury. Estrada was later placed under house arrest at his estate in Tanay, Rizal. In 2004, South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun was also impeached on charges of illegal electioneering, incompetence and economic mismanagement. The impeachment moves failed months after the Constitutional Court ruled that the charges were not serious enough to merit Moo-hyun’s removal from office. Moo-hyun was later reinstated with a stronger mandate but his popularity dropped. In Thailand, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted by a military junta in a bloodless coup d’etat in 2006. After his ouster, Thaksin resigned as leader of the Thai Rak Thai party. He now lives in London. Five ‘Eraps’ in Latin America In Latin America, at least five heads of state were put on trial and removed from public office. In 1992, President Fernando Collor de Mello of Brazil resigned over allegations of receiving millions of dollars in kickbacks and commissions from public works contracts. Congress impeached Collor de Mello even after he resigned. He was barred from entering politics for eight years. In 1994, a court declared Collor de Mello innocent of charges of corruption, but his political rights were not reinstated. In 2002, when his political rights were restored, Collor de Mello ran but lost in gubernatorial elections. In 2006, 14 years after his impeachment, he ran and won as senator. The case of Venezuela’s Carlos Andres Perez has some similarities with Estrada’s. In 1993, the Venezuelan president was impeached by Congress on corruption charges. He was detained for two years. The court later convicted Andres Perez of embezzlement of public funds and was sentenced to 28 months of house arrest. He was again imprisoned in 1998 for allegedly maintaining joint accounts with his mistress. In the same year, the court dismissed the charges against Andres Perez. He eventually returned to politics and became a senator. In Paraguay, President Raul Cubas Grau resigned in 1999 while an impeachment proceeding against him was ongoing. The impeachment complaint was triggered by Grau’s alleged unconstitutional order to release an imprisoned former army commander who was charged of leading a coup. The Venezuelan leader resigned amid public outrage over the assassination of Vice President Luis Maria Agaña, who initiated the impeachment move. House arrest, asylum In Peru, President Alberto Fujimori resigned in 2000 amid corruption scandals and mounting dissatisfaction of his administration. He was criticized for being an authoritarian leader who intimidated political opponents. Congress rejected Fujimori’s resignation but voted to remove him from office. He is now under house arrest in Chile. In Ecuador, President Lucio Gutierrez was removed from office in 2005 after Congress voted for his ouster. A year earlier, Gutierrez replaced members of the Supreme Court with supporters to avoid impeachment. The move triggered massive protests. He sought asylum in Brazil, but later went to Peru and the United States. In 2006, Gutierrez went back to Ecuador. He ran but lost in the presidential race. Death in prison In Europe, Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia, suffered the most after he conceded defeat in the 2000 presidential elections and resigned amid demonstrations. In 2001, Milosevic was arrested on charges of corruption and was extradited to The Hague to face charges of war crimes. Forces under Milosevic’s command carried out massacres and displaced non-Serb civilian populations in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. In March 2006, Milosevic was found dead inside his prison cell at the United Nation’s war crimes tribunal's detention center in The Netherlands. He died of heart attack. In Lithuania, President Roland Paksas was removed from office in 2004 on corruption charges. He was accused of granting citizenship to a Russian businessman in exchange for financial support. Paksas is the first European head of state to have been impeached. In 2005, after his impeachment, Paksas faced another legal trouble when a district court convicted him for disclosing state secrets to his Russian financial sponsor. Paksas appealed his case before the Supreme Court. The high tribunal acquitted the former Lithuanian leader. It did not end Paksa’s problems. Lithuania’s Constitutional Court convicted him of violating the Constitution on three counts and of breaking his oath of office. Paksas is now looking for ways to annul the court's ruling to again run for public office. - With reports from GMA News Research