by Alito L. Malinao
MANILA, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- In the Philippines, with its free-wheeling and rambunctious democracy, practically anything goes, including in politics, which is the favorite pastime of Filipinos.
In the upcoming polls in May next year, two former presidents are running for reelection for posts lower than what they have occupied in the past.
Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who had been president for almost 10 years, is running for reelection as representative of the second congressional district in Pampanga, her home province.
Arroyo, who has been under hospital arrest at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City, a suburb of Manila, first ran and won as representative in 2010 immediately after she finished her term as president.
Before joining politics, Arroyo was a former professor of economics at the prestigious Ateneo de Manila University where President Benigno Aquino III was one of her students.
By a strange twist of fate, Aquino is now hounding his former mentor by filing a string of graft and election-related cases against Arroyo.
Despite a recent court order granting her bail or temporary liberty for the charge of electoral sabotage, Arroyo is still facing criminal charges for her alleged role in the anomalous release of funds from a government lottery agency.
Arroyo is also suffering from various ailments prompting the court to allow her to be detained in government medical facility.
There is nothing in the Philippine constitution that bars officials who have completed their terms to run for public office again but for a different position.
On Wednesday, former Congressman Mikey Arroyo filed the certificate of candidacy of his mother, former President Arroyo, for her third and last term as member of the lower house of the Congress.
Arroyo, 68, is the daughter of the late President Diosdado Macapagal. She was elected vice president of the Philippines in l998, but in early 2001 she assumed the presidency when then duly-elected President Joseph Ejercito Estrada was ousted from power in a military-backed civilian uprising, now called the "EDSA People Power 2."
The political life of Arroyo and Estrada is intertwined in Philippine history.
While Arroyo took over the presidency from Estrada who was elected president in 1998 for a six-year term but served only two years because of the EDSA People Power 2, it was Arroyo who pardoned Estrada when the latter was convicted of embezzlement.
Because of the presidential pardon, Estrada was spared from life imprisonment and was able to resume his political career.
Estrada, 78, is a former movie actor. He is running for reelection as mayor of the capital Manila.
Despite his conviction of plunder and being the first Philippine president to be sentenced to life imprisonment, Estrada won as mayor of Manila in the 2013 local elections.
In the 2010 presidential elections, Estrada bested other presidential candidates and emerged second only to President Aquino.
In May 2016 elections, Estrada is running against two formidable opponents, former Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim and Manila Congressman Amado Bagatsing.
While Arroyo is odds-on to win a new term because she is still well-loved by her constituents, Estrada is not so sure of his reelection. He won against Lim in the 2013 elections by a margin of only 40,000 votes.
But anything can happen in a Philippine election and nothing is final until after the last vote is counted in the polling precincts.
