Throwing everything, including the jueteng and smuggling sink, topped off with the murder toilet bowl, at his former President and Commander-in-Chief, former President Joseph Estrada, Sen. Panfilo Lacson wreaked his revenge on him, exposing the former leader’s "bad side" and asking God to spare the country from Estrada.

It is common knowledge that Lacson, who is supporting another opposition candidate, has asked Estrada to drop his presidential bid and endorse Liberal Party (LP) standard bearer Sen. Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino, saying that Estrada is no leader as he insists on not withdrawing while asking all others to withdraw their bids so that Estrada would remain standing as the opposition candidate.

In reply, Estrada, through his spokesman, Margaux Salcedo, issued a statement, saying that Lacson had no right to speak of opposition unity since it was he who had caused the disunity of the political opposition in 2004.

Lacson was also riled when reporters quoted Estrada as

saying that the supervision of the operations --- mentioned was the Oplan Delta ---was under Lacson, being the PNP chief.

In a privilege speech deliverd yesterday, Lacson, apart from accusing Estrada of being heavily involved in jueteng, rice smuggling and other anomalies when he was in Malacañang, also claimed that Estrada micro-managed the Philippine National Police and the defunct Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (Paoctf) an agency under Lacson when he was the PNP chief, saying that Estrada directly issued orders to his men, hinting broadly that Estrada may have had a hand in the murders of Salvador "Bubby" Dacer and his driver, Emmanuel Corbito, thus absolving himself of the crime.

What Lacson claimed, however, does not jibe with the Cesar Mancao testimony which the state witness has affirmed.

The senator also painted before the public his former superior as a "jueteng lord" or "big-time jueteng protector" and "smuggler" and used his powers to commit graft.

"Jueteng became a sore point between me and Mr. Estrada. I made it clear that I would stick to my ‘no-take policy’ and I continued to issue stern warnings to my regional and provincial directors that if they tolerate jueteng operations in their areas of responsibility, they would be removed and subjected to harsh disciplinary action," Lacson said, adding that the illegal numbers game proved to be the deal breaker in getting his appointment as PNP chief.

Lacson said he was not appointed to the post, as he had expected, until Nov. 16, 1999 or with more than a year and a half of delay. Estrada assumed office in June 1998.

Jueteng was among the issues leveled against Estrada during his impeachment trial by his then accuser, former Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis "Chavit" Singson, now deputy national security adviser.

In his jueteng allegations, Lacson appeared to have hewed closely to the line of Singson.

Lacson, however, offered no evidence with which to back up his charges.

Lacson confessed that his "falling out" with Estrada, who practically "made" him, having been plucked out of his short-lived stint as provincial director of Laguna to join the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission ((PACC), started right after the former leader assumed the presidency, purportedly because of the jueteng issue.

It was Estrada who gave him to his first star-rank in 1994, "way ahead of my peers and even senior officers in the PNP," Lacson admitted.

"Sometime in August 2000, when Mr. Estrada was hardly talking to me, on account of my hard-headedness on the issue of jueteng, he was giving a direct order to one of my subordinate officers in Paoctf to release a shipload of smuggled rice that was apprehended somewhere in the Cebu-Bohol area.

"The Paoctf officer was with me in Cebu during that time, and he was relaying to me the President’s order. I did not bother to find out anymore if the officer complied or not with Mr. Estrada’s order.

"I thought I should not interfere with a direct order coming from the President to a subordinate officer because in doing so I felt that it would add insult to injury upon myself," he said.

Estrada, he claimed, initially impressed him as a good leader, mindful of the safety, needs and even accomplishments of his subordinates which was often compensated with incentives.

But Estrada’s image, in the eyes of the senator, changed when the former leader hinted to him that he was having second thoughts on his alleged promised post to the late Gen. Joselin Nazareno, as being chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

Lacson also said that in his early days in office or sometime in Aug. 1998, Estrada allegedly pressured businessman and banker Alfonso Yunchengco to sign conveyance of his 7.75 percent of PTIC (Philippine Telecommunications Investment Corporation) holdings, equivalent to 18,720 shares to Metro Pacific, represented by Manuel V. Pangilinan.

These PTIC holdings correspond to 2,017,650 PLDT common shares.

"Mr. Yuchengco, I also learned later, was pressed to sign a waiver of his right of first refusal over the PTIC shares of the Cojuangco-Meer group. It was only after the passage of many years that I was to learn that Mr. Estrada, barely two months in office then, used the PNP to harass Mr. Yuchengco’s son, Tito, with threat of arrest on some trumped-up drug charges to force his father, Mr. Yuchengco to sell.

"This harassment of the young man was accomplished through deliberate and obvious physical surveillance," he said.

Lacson claimed that Estrada was also engaged in smuggling activities, having received instructions once to pull out his agents on the lookout then of supposed illegal contrabands about to enter the country and another, a directive from the former president made to a subordinate, relayed to him, on a shipload of smuggled rice in Cebu.

Then came the issue on jueteng, as he was consulted by Estrada in at least two occasions in early June of 1999 and in November of the same year, on the possibility of legalizing the illegal numbers game, and effect, soliciting his support then as he was known to be in the thick of the campaign against such gambling in various provinces.

"Finally on Nov. 16, 1999, I was appointed Chief, PNP. But only after persistent second thoughts from the appointing authority. On Nov. 15 of the same year, I received a call from his cohort, Mr. Jaime Dichaves, who was, at that time, with Mr. Estrada in Tagaytay Highlands in Cavite. Mr. Dichaves told me I was to be informed of my appointment as Chief, PNP.

"It did not turn out to be that simple. In the living room of the Tagaytay resthouse, he told me very seriously: "Ping , we have to give in to the jueteng operations. A lot of people are pining their hopes on that," he claimed.

"By that time, I had realized jueteng had always been the deal breaker in getting my impending appointment and must be the reason why I was not appointed in June of 1998.

"Estrada did not appoint me right there, instead instructed me to follow his convoy back to Malacañang in Metro Manila.

"It was in Malacañang, that same evening, that he finally informed me of my appointment to the position, but not without his "last appeal on jueteng," he claimed, adding that "it was also during that conversation when I told him I was aware of the monthly P5 Million ‘S.O.P.’ being given by Gov. Chavit Singson to the Chief PNP as part of an organized payola, and that I was waiving it, therefore would not accept it.

"Three or four months after my assumption of office, I learned that Mr. Estrada asked Governor Singson to remit to him retroactively the monies intended for the Chief, PNP.

It was then when his life started to become "miserable," Lacson said.

"The general public, even most of my distinguished colleagues in this hall, may not be aware of this, but it was common knowledge in Malacañang as well as in Camp Crame at that time, that for the most part of the second half of the year 2000, I was not welcome in the Palace due to my differences with then President Estrada over the issue of jueteng.

"Mr. Estrada had unofficially declared me persona non grata in the palace grounds. I was practically in the doghouse for an unusually extended period of time. Mr. Estrada would not talk to me. He was dealing directly with my subordinate officers, both at the Paoctf and the PNP, which I both headed in concurrent capacity," he said.

Toward the end of his speech, Lacson delved on the issue of the Dacer-Corbito case, giving broad hints that the issue of Estrada practically pinning him down on the case, prompted him to deliver the speech.

"The great American writer Elbert Green Hubbard once wrote: If you work for a man, in heaven’s name work for him.... If you must vilify, condemn, and eternally disparage, resign your position, and when you are OUTSIDE, DAMN TO YOUR HEART’s CONTENT, but as long as you are part of the institution do not condemn it. If you do that, you are loosening the tendrils that are holding you to that institution, and at the first high wind that comes along, you will be uprooted and blown away, and will probably never know the reason why.

"I hope you will understand why it has taken me this long to unburden myself of the truth I carry. Having once been a professional soldier trained in the tradition and practice of institutional and even personal loyalty, only the higher interest of nation and people, and the highest call of conscience, impel me to speak out," said Lacson.