WHO would have thought that Joseph Estrada would be run out of town and clapped under house arrest barely one year and a half in office after winning the 1998 presidential election with the largest electoral majority in history?

Blame it on jueteng, a numbers game popular with the masses whose votes carried Estrada to Malacañang, and which is now hounding his successor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, her husband, Miguel, and congressman-son, Mikey, who are fending off allegations that the First Family is on the take from jueteng money.

More precisely, blame Estrada’s crushing downfall on his erstwhile drinking buddy and partner in hanky panky, Luis “Chavit” Singson, who blew the whistle on Erap’s alleged jueteng payoffs but adroitly avoided prosecution for his complicity by turning state witness.

Mrs. Arroyo strenuously denies receiving payola from jueteng lords, particularly from his townmate and compadre Bong Pineda who, with Chavit, is ranked among the leading jueteng lords in a list compiled by a feisty bishop from Pangasinan.

Will the jueteng payola scandal, which smells to high heavens if the good bishop is to be believed, do to President Arroyo, what it did to President Estrada?

Arroyo’s quitting or being driven from office does not stand a Chinaman’s chance. First, there should be a Chavit who will spill the beans on the First Family. (There’s no one today who fits the bill). Second, Congress and the all-powerful but tainted military are solid behind the President that any feeble try to unseat her, within or outside the law, will miserably fail.

In fact, if the military leadership did not turn tail, Estrada would still be president today. He would have weathered the impeachment proceeding in the Senate where his party, though outnumbered, could seduce one or two other senators to vote no.

What Estrada did not figure were his defense secretary and armed forces chief of staff who suddenly and unexpectedly deserted him at the eleventh hour and joined the pro-Arroyo demonstration which became known as Edsa Dos (2).

Within hours after wresting the presidency, Arroyo offered Estrada “a voluntary exit” to save him from the humiliation of facing corruption charges on two conditions: Submit a letter of resignation (to this day he considers Arroyo a usurper) and to leave the country through the front or back door without a resignation letter and taking his assets with him.

Estrada rejected the offer offhand, perhaps taking a leaf from the late President Ferdinand Marcos who was exiled to Hawaii after Edsa Uno (1) and who returned to his homeland in a casket after dying in a Honolulu hospital.

In Churchilianesque, Estrada responded to the first offer and a similar bid in the future: “Never. Never will I leave the country. I was born here. I live here and will die here.”

The rest, to coin a phrase, will be history.