Was I the last Indian to have dined in Manila's Presidential Palace with the recently booted-out president of the Philippines, Joseph Estrada, while he was still president of his country? I believe so. And I will claim that dubious distinction, unless somebody else can come up with irrefutable evidence to the contrary. No, I was not served the famed $1,000 (close to Rs 50,000) a bottle "Chateau Petrus" wine, Estrada's favourite, of which, according to the International Herald Tribune, he imbibed six to 10 bottles in the course of a typical evening (that works out to a mind-boggling Rs 3 to 5 lakh of wine an evening). I was given what tasted very much like Vin Ordinaire, or French table wine, the cheapest that you can get, even cheaper than our own Indian Grover or Riviera wine. But who's complaining? It's not everyday that one gets to dine at one of the grandest presidential palaces in the world.
This was less than two months ago. I was part of a study tour of the Philippines, conducted by the Washington-based Population Institute (PI), an ngo that annually gives prizes to the media for excellence in reporting on population-related issues. I happen to be the chairperson of the PI's global media awards committee. The award-winners are given an all-expenses-paid study tour of a developing country that has done well in its family planning programme.
This time, the Philippines had been chosen and Estrada was honouring us journalists from various parts of the world by hosting a dinner and giving away the awards, one of whom, incidentally, was the International Herald Tribune, which had only a short while earlier published two devastating articles, highlighting the Philippine president's alleged corruption, wheeling and dealing and unbelievably flamboyant lifestyle. That lifestyle included the keeping of five mistresses in the grandest of opulence and the fathering of 11 children, all of them having names that begin with the letter "J". The beauty of it all was that Estrada was not in the least bit ashamed of his mistresses and illegitimate children. At first, his people loved him for his candour. But mistresses and having bastards is one thing, looting the exchequer and being drunk morning and evening, quite another.
Be that as it may, though we were only too pleased to have him as our chief guest, a lot of Filipinos must have been wondering why the president of a nation which is 85 per cent Roman Catholic and whose chief Cardinal—with the thunderously forbidding name of cardinal Jaime Sin—is virulently opposed to any kind of contraception, was gracing a ceremony celebrating the cause of family planning?