Former President Joseph Estrada aired his gratitude Sunday to his millions of supporters for their enduring and unfading trust as shown by the big crowd who waited in Tondo last Wednesday to hear him announce his entry in next year’s presidential race which, he said, will always serve as his “calming vindication” for the lost years as a political detainee.

Estrada made the statement on his second year as a free man after almost seven years he spent away from the public glare in several government detention quarters following the 2001 power grab that shortened his six-year term after he won the 1998 presidential elections with 10.8 million popular votes, the largest in the nation’s electoral history.

“The inspiring support and undiminished confidence bestowed on me helps erase the pain of betrayal inflicted by the very people I trusted, and the many years I lost while the government kept me under government detention in various military camps,” Estrada said on the eve of the second year to the day he walked to freedom with all his civil and political rights fully restored.

But, according to Estrada, the “torture the Arroyo government inflicted on him and his family as well as the betrayal by his trusted men, belong to the past.”

Estrada made the statement to the Manila Bulletin as he recalled the long years he and his son, now Senate President Protempore Jinggoy Estrada spent being moved from military camp to another as government detainees.

The highly popular opposition leader, now on the verge of a political battle to reclaim the years stolen from his presidency, said one of his most bitter moments was when he, former First Lady and Sen. Loi Estrada and Jinggoy were taken by military elements from the Veterans Memorial Hospital and thrown into an armored military tank a few days after they were taken prisoners by some 6,000 military and police elements on April 2001.

“We were taken to the Veterans Hospital after Camp Crame after we were arrested at the height of EDSA III when millions of our people gathered at EDSA to protest what the government had done. Then in the middle of the night, we were fetched by some military elements without telling us where they were taking us to,” Estrada said.

Dra. Loi, expressing great apprehension as to what they planned to do to her husband and son, was adamant. She insisted to go with them to “wherever and whatever” so she would be a living witness to what the government planned to do.

For almost two hours, the Estradas were kept inside the sweltering heat of the armored military tank that had a machine-gun on top, not knowing where they were being brought to, as the vehicle kept on moving and turning.

“It was only after the armored van came to a full stop, and after we were taken out from the military tank did we realize we were back in Camp Crame,” Estrada remembered, adding the torturing pain of that experience will always stay in his heart.

He, however, admitted that the agony of those long years as a political detainee would have been intolerable had it not been for the continuing support and trust by the crowds who followed Estrada to wherever military camp or hospital he was brought to, offering prayers and bringing food, fruits, and whatever they could bring on his birthday, Christmas Day, and other important events.

In the proclamation rally last Wednesday, thousands of Estrada’s supporters began to gather long before noon and stayed until after Estrada announced his decision to run in the 2010 presidential derby amid a friendly “Erap weather” defying weather forecasts of typhoon “Ramil.”

Before proceeding to Tondo, Estrada spent time in prayers at the family mausoleum in San Juan City where his parents, the late Engr. Emilio Ejercito, Sr. and Doña Mary who passed away early this year at the age of 103, lay buried.

Arriving in Tondo, Estrada was met by thousands of cheering supporters who braved the day’s heat after years of believing they were forced by the government to forget the man whom they sent to the highest corridor of power in 1998 with the largest popular majority.

“The agony and the public humiliation I went through belongs to the past even as I bowed to what I thought was the existence of the Rule of Law. And to those who betrayed me, I have long offered them in the altar of forgiveness before the Divine Providence as I move forward to face the challenges of what is in front of me, while trying not to look back at what is behind me, ” Estrada said.