ABSTRACT
Vice-President Joseph Ejercito Estrada was born April 19, 1937, in a lower-middle-class neighborhood of Tondo. Because of his national visibility as an actor, he ran as an independent candidate for vice-president in 1992, winning with a much higher plurality than Ramos achieved. Many of the factors have already been identified, including a pernicious brain drain, too great a reliance on the United States for security, and too fractious an oligarchy that retains too much of the wealth for itself but cannot accept the discipline required for genuine nation-building. And Estrada emerged, a sociocultural anomaly, elected by his nation seemingly in happy defiance of a tradition of ilustrado hegemony and technocratic dominance. Estrada's defense minister, Orlando Mercado, noted with resignation and frustration that the Philippines has a navy that can't go out to sea and an air-force that cannot fly. The Philippine government lacks the funds necessary to build and maintain an effective deterrent either at sea or in the air.
