It may have been a joke, perhaps it was meant to be nothing more than a clever cocktail-circuit quip, but former President Corazon Aquino’s apology to the disgraced former President Joseph Estrada for the “mistake” of Edsa 2001 is a betrayal of the highest aspirations of the democracy she helped restore in 1986, and which she remains the famous icon of.

It also betrays the elitist understanding of the former president, twice the Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Filipino of the Year, of the dynamics of recent mass movements in Philippine politics.

Estrada, convicted of plunder in 2007 and almost immediately pardoned after by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, welcomed Aquino’s apology as a “vindication” and “the best Christmas gift.” That he saw Aquino’s remarks as such undermines Aquino’s belated attempt, through her spokesperson, to limit the meaning of her apology and thus the fallout from her language.

What, exactly, did Aquino say? Speaking after Estrada’s turn at Lakas stalwart Jose de Venecia’s book launching last Monday, Aquino said: “I am one of those who plead guilty for the 2001 [People Power uprising]. Lahat naman tayo nagkakamali. Patawarin mo na lang ako. [We all make mistakes. Please forgive me.]”

Her spokesperson, Deedee Siytangco, said the remark was said in jest. “President Aquino was not prepared [to give extended remarks]. Everything was in a light vein, in reaction to Erap ribbing JDV about his role in Edsa II and that everything was forgiven.” And then Siytangco added, puzzlingly: “But she’s not taking it back.”

She wasn’t, because in truth this was not the first time Aquino expressed regret over her role in unseating Estrada. In October 2005, after publicly calling on President Arroyo to resign because of election fraud, she said she regretted joining the people power protest against Estrada. “I thought GMA would be a better alternative to Estrada.”

Well, so did we and millions of other Filipinos. But Edsa II was never about Arroyo. She was the main beneficiary because she had been elected to the vice presidency in 1998; in other words, she was the constitutional successor. But it was never about her.

Edsa II was a direct political action triggered by evidence of grave presidential wrongdoing; it was conceivable that Estrada could have blustered his way through the crisis, even after the military leadership had withdrawn its support from him, but there is no second-guessing the reason why millions of Filipinos were again out in the streets. In other words, even if Estrada had learned to tough it out with political wiles it is now clear he did not have then, the crowds in the street would have still been doing the right thing: expressing outrage over presidential corruption and agitating for a change of power.

Last year’s well-argued, solidly based Sandiganbayan decision finding him guilty of two of four counts of plunder is the best justification for Edsa II. That, in the eyes of many, Ms Arroyo and her husband are equally guilty of large-scale plunder is no reason to regret Edsa II. What it is, instead, is reason to regret the seeming difficulty of launching Edsa III.

So on three crucial points, Sen. Benigno Aquino’s widow and democracy’s icon got it completely wrong: Edsa II was about ridding the country’s highest office of the cancer of corruption, not about handing Ms Arroyo the position she would have been likely to contest in 2004 anyway. It was about a morally outraged people taking action, with no guarantee that a presidency built on the image of tough-talking machismo would prove vulnerable to street protests. (Even if Estrada had been as tough as he made himself out to be, taking to the streets would still have been the right course of action.) And, not least, the Filipino nation now has incontrovertible proof of Estrada’s perfidy; that, in the end, is the true meaning of Estrada’s plunder conviction.

Would we have preferred that Aquino apologize for the Filipino people’s seeming indifference to the Arroyo administration’s many scandals? Now stricken with cancer of the colon, she is a much frailer, more sympathetic figure who deserves every moment of her retirement. What we really would have wanted to see was Estrada apologizing for the corruption he was found guilty of. That would have been the best Christmas gift for a weary nation.