Juan Ponce Enrile

Juan Valentin Furagganan Ponce Enrile Sr., (born Juan Valentin Furagganan; February 14, 1924), also referred to by his initials JPE, is a Filipino politician and lawyer known for his role in the administration of Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos; his role in the failed coup that helped hasten the 1986 People Power Revolution and the ouster of Marcos; and his tenure in the Philippine legislature in the years after the revolution.

Enrile has served four terms in the Senate, in a total of twenty-two years, he holds the third longest-tenure in the history of the upper chamber.

In 2022, at the age of 98, he returned to government office as the Chief Presidential Legal Counsel in the administration of President Bongbong Marcos.

Enrile was a protégé of President Ferdinand Marcos who served as Justice Secretary and Defense Minister during the Marcos administration.

Enrile played a key role in the planning and documentary legwork for Martial Law, and was in charge of the Philippine Military during its implementation.

Other roles in this period included Presidency of the Philippine Coconut Authority through which he gained control of the copra industry together with Danding Cojuangco, and being the general put in charge of logging in the Philippines under martial law - a period during which lumber exports were so extensive that the forest cover of the Philippines shrank until only 8% remained.

Enrile was born on February 14, 1924, in Gonzaga, Cagayan, to Petra Furagganan, the stepdaughter of a poor fisherman.

He was born out of wedlock, as his father, the Spanish mestizo lawyer and influential provincial politician Alfonso Ponce Enrile, was already married.

At the time of his birth, Alfonso served as a representative from the 1st district of Cagayan.

His second great-uncle was Mariano Ponce.

He was baptized into the Philippine Independent Church (Aglipayan) as Juanito Furagganan.

He converted to Roman Catholicism at age 20.

As a young man, he was reunited with his father in the City of Manila and took his secondary education at Saint James Academy in Malabon, Rizal.

His father took legal steps in changing his name to Juan Ponce Enrile, the name that he would use for his pre-law enrollment.

He graduated cum laude in 1949 with an Associate of Arts degree from the Ateneo de Manila.

Afterward, he attended the University of the Philippines College of Law and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Laws degree.

While in law school, he joined the Sigma Rho fraternity, the oldest law-based fraternity in Asia with other Senate colleagues such as Franklin Drilon and father and son duo Edgardo Angara and Sonny Angara among many others.

Upon graduation, he was elected to the Pi Gamma Mu and Phi Kappa Phi international honor societies.

He scored 11th in the 1953 bar examinations with a 91.72% rating and a perfect score in mercantile law.

As a scholar at Harvard Law School, he earned a Master of Laws degree with specialized training in international tax law.

He taught law at the Far Eastern University and practiced law in his father's law firm before taking responsibility for then-Senator Ferdinand Marcos' personal legal affairs in 1964, especially during the latter's term as Senate President.

After Marcos was elected president in 1965, Enrile became part of his inner circle.

Enrile, like Marcos, comes from the northern Philippines, a region that had become Marcos' recruiting ground for key political and military leaders during his time.

Enrile was with Marcos since his election in 1965.

His campaign efforts were rewarded with an appointment as chief of the Bureau of Customs and the government's service insurance commission.

The Department of National Defense would expand its power when Marcos assumed the presidency in 1965.

From 1966 to 1968, he was the Undersecretary and sometime Acting Secretary of the Department of Finance.

He concurrently became acting Insurance Commissioner and Commissioner of the Bureau of Customs.

From 1968 to 1970, he was the Secretary of Justice.

Marcos appointed Enrile as his Secretary of National Defense on February 9, 1970, a position Enrile held until August 27, 1971, when he resigned to run unsuccessfully for the senate.

He was re-appointed Defense Secretary by Marcos on January 4, 1972.

As Defense Secretary, he was the highest-ranked commissioned officer of a nation's armed forces.

From the beginning of Marcos' period in government, Enrile was one of the few that the former president trusted, and was seen by many as Marcos' protégé.

By the 1980s, however, rising factionalism in the Marcos administration led to a reduction in Enrile's influence within the administration.

Enrile and the Reform the Armed Forces Movement organized a plot to overthrow Marcos in February 1986, but they were discovered.

Deciding to stage a last stand in Camp Aguinaldo, Enrile sought support from other units of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and received it from Philippine Constabulary General Fidel Ramos in nearby Camp Crame, who joined Enrile in withdrawing support for Marcos in February 1986.

Marcos moved to put down the dissenters in Camps Aguinaldo and Crame, but civilians who were already preparing mass protests in response to electoral fraud during the 1986 Philippine presidential election went en masse to Epifanio de los Santos Avenue near Enrile and Ramos's forces, and prevented Marcos from assaulting the coup organizers.

This mass movement of citizens to protect Enrile and Ramos was one of the key moments of the 1986 People Power Revolution which drove Marcos out of power and into exile.

Enrile has continued to be a politician since 1986; he was the Senate President from November 2008 until his resignation on June 5, 2013.

He remained a Senator until 2016, latterly as Minority Leader.