CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – Former President Joseph “Erap” Estrada said he smells victory while speaking to 50,000 supporters late Saturday night in a campaign rally, which Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) said had the biggest crowd to attend since the start of the campaign last February.

“I think this is the warmest and the biggest rally that I attended … It felt like I was already going back to Malacanang. It’s like 1998 all over again and it just showed that the people of Cagayan de Oro and also Iligan (are here to support me). I was touched,” Estrada said.

Estrada, who won a landslide victory against his toughest rival and then-Speaker Jose “Joe” De Venecia in the 1998 presidential elections, told reporters that seeing the support of people from Cagayan de Oro has boosted his confidence about his chance to return to the presidency this year.

The former president, who was ousted through people power revolution just two years of his presidency in 2001, also convinced the people to give him another landslide victory in Mindanao, a known stronghold of the opposition, by reminding them of the late actor Fernando Poe Jr.

“FPJ, ‘wag mo muna akong apurahin… susunod ako (pero) itutuloy ko muna ang laban natin. Kaya ibalik nyo ako sa Malacañang,” Estrada said after taking a long pause in the middle of his speech as if offering a moment of silence for his best friend, who died of cancer in 2007.

“I mentioned his name so that people would be reminded that we were friends, that we were both cheated. We both lost our positions. She (President Arroyo) has stolen the presidency not once but twice,” he claimed.