MANILA (AFP) – Former Philippine President Joseph Estrada may walk more with a shuffle than a strut nowadays, but his movie-star moustache remains perfectly manicured. His famous charm also still shines through when meeting the media, while portraying himself as a defender of the Southeast Asian nation's poor masses is a role he continues to play with ease.

And so at age 72, Estrada says he is ready to once again become president.

''I work so hard, morning to night. Sometimes I work until 3 o'clock in the morning,'' Estrada told AFP in an hour-long interview this week as he prepared for a final bout of campaigning ahead of national elections in May.

Estrada is making an unlikely attempt for political resurrection after his first stint at the presidency ended abruptly in 2001 amid allegations of corruption and mass street rallies. While he was subsequently jailed for plunder and later pardoned, Estrada remains adamant he was the innocent victim of a conspiracy allegedly led by corporate titans and the equally influential Catholic church.

''These big businesses and the church... conspired to oust me unconstitutionally and illegally because I did not give in to their requests,'' Estrada claimed as he puffed on a filtered cigarette at his upscale Manila home.

But while personal redemption is often cited by political observers as a driving force in Estrada wanting to return to the presidency, he said it is about completing the tasks he set out to do in his truncated first term. ''I was not able to finish the programs I had intended for the greater good of the greatest people, and that is the poor,'' he said.

Estrada then listed a myriad of problems plaguing the country and which he said he could quickly fix, including a decades-long Muslim insurgency. Without any hint of irony, Estrada also highlighted corruption as one of the most corrosive forces in the Philippines. When he was convicted in 2007 following a six-year trial, a special anti-graft court found him guilty of plundering tens of millions of dollars during his less than three years as president. But Estrada said that not only was he innocent of those charges, but he had always stayed above the graft that pervades Philippine politics, from the day he became a city mayor in 1967.

''None. None whatsoever,'' he said when asked if he had even once engaged in corrupt activity as a  politician.

''I think he has a point that what happened (being ousted) was politically motivated and not just simply that he was corrupt,'' Bob Broadfoot, head of the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, told AFP.

Estrada, who rose to power on the back of his fame as a movie actor playing roles as defender of the poor, struggled to paint other controversial aspects of his life in similarly black-and-white tones. He is well-known to have been a heavy drinker with a special fondness for whiskey -- critics monikered his late-night drinking sessions with powerful friends at the presidential palace the ''midnight cabinet''.

Questioned about his drinking habits, Estrada initially said he stopped drinking alcohol altogether as vice-president. However, he later qualified that to concede he still enjoyed drinking French red wine.

One undeniable fact is that Estrada is the oldest of the nine presidential candidates -- he would be nearing 80 at the end of his six-year term should he win the election. But Estrada said his advancing years should not count against him, pointing to Ronald Reagan and Nelson Mandela as men who were elected to lead their countries at an older age. ''If they can do it, why can't I?'' he said.

Asked why he was the best person to lead a nation of nearly 100 million people, Estrada returned to his character of a strong man determined to fight the powerful on behalf of the poor. ''I cannot be pressured by these oligarchs and these elitists. Neither can I be pressured by the church,'' he said.

The reality is that, while Estrada retains strong support among the poor, he will likely not win the election. He is running third in national surveys with almost 20 percent support, but he remains a long way behind front-runner Senator Benigno Aquino, the son of democracy heroine former President Corazon Aquino.

And while Estrada insisted he could still win, he revealed he had contemplated life as a loser -- and that it would no longer involve politics. ''I would completely retire from the public... and just spend time with my grandchildren,'' he said.