Juan Ponce Enrile

This article is about the Filipino politician Juan Ponce Enrile. For the son of the same name, see Juan Ponce Enrile junior .

Juan Ponce Enrile

Juan Ponce Enrile (birth name: Juanito Furagganan ) (born February 14, 1924 in Cagayan , Cagayan Province ) is a Filipino politician .

biography

Confidante and minister under Ferdinand Marcos

After Ferdinand Marcos was elected President of the Philippines on November 9, 1965, Enrile was appointed Head of Customs (Commissioner of Customs) and as such was the acting Minister of Finance between 1966 and 1968 . Then he was appointed in 1968 by Marcos as Minister of Justice in his government. As part of a cabinet reshuffle, he was appointed Defense Minister for the first time in February 1970 and initially held this post until August 1971.

Enrile as Secretary of Defense with President Marcos in Washington, DC (1983)

After the declaration of a state of emergency on September 21, 1972, Marcos reappointed him as Minister of Defense. In this role he was responsible for enforcing martial law, which existed between 1972 and 1981 and, like many other ministers in the Marcos government, amassed a large fortune. In 1972 he was responsible for the arrest and subsequent eight-year imprisonment of the senator , opposition politician and opponent Marcos, Benigno Aquino . Enrile was therefore more involved than most other politicians in the authoritarian regime . Over time, he developed a great political ambition and saw himself as a possible challenger to Marcos in the presidential elections. However, Marcos previously deprived him of a number of powers as defense minister.

He was also a member of the Ilocos Region Assembly between June 1978 and June 1984 .

Despite his responsibility for the imprisonment of Aquino, after the fatal assassination attempt on Aquino's return on August 21, 1983 at Manila airport, he publicly mourned and tried to be the only politician from President Marcos' inner circle to attend the funeral .

Break with Marcos and Senator

On February 22, 1986, his behavior aroused great amazement among the Filipino population when he and his military supporters, such as Lieutenant General Fidel Ramos, barricaded themselves at the headquarters of the armed forces (Camp Aguinaldo) and announced that he would withdraw support from the Marcos government. Instead, he announced his support for Aquino's widow, Corazon Aquino , who had recently lost to Marcos in an apparently rigged election as president.

On February 25, 1986, his rebellion and the Aquino-inspired demonstrations of the EDSA revolution led to the collapse of the more than twenty-year-old dictatorship of Marcos. Corazon Aquino, who took office as President of the Philippines on the same day after Marcos fled into exile in the USA , also appointed Enrile to her cabinet as Minister of Defense.

Only a few weeks after Aquino took office, however, he began to publicly criticize the president's policy, in particular because of her negotiations with the insurgent New People's Army (NPA), a guerrilla organization belonging to the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas . At the end of 1986 he tried unsuccessfully to overthrow Aquino by means of a military coup . This led to her dismissing him as Secretary of Defense on November 23, 1986.

In June 1987 he was elected a member of the Senate for the first time and was a member of it until June 1992. During this time, between June 1987 and 1991, he was also the minority floor leader and thus leader of the opposition in the Senate.

He then became a member of the House of Representatives and represented the interests of the 1st electoral district of Cagayan Province from June 1992 to June 1995 . Between June 1995 and June 2001 he was again a senator.

In May 2001, Enrile was imprisoned for rebellion following a siege of then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's presidential palace , in which he is alleged to have been involved. Macapagal Arroyo had recently been sworn in by the office of Vice President as President of the Philippines after the then incumbent President Joseph Estrada was involved in a corruption scandal and was removed from office.

From June 2004 until the 2016 election, Juan Ponce Enrile was again a member of the Senate and was elected President of the Senate in 2008, an office he held until 2013. In his last tenure as Senator from 2013 to 2016, he was again a minority leader in the Senate.

Corruption and bribery allegations

Since 2013, there have been allegations of corruption and misappropriation of public funds against Juan Ponce Enrile. In early 2013, he was accused of giving Christmas gifts totaling 1.6 million pesos to well-meaning senators. The funds for this were therefore declared as public expenditure for maintenance and other operating expenses. Later in the same year, the so-called “pork barrel” scam (officially the “Priority Development Assistance Fund scam”) came to light, in the course of which between 1996 and 2013 up to 10 billion pesos of public money were systematically embezzled. Enrile is accused of having received around 170 million pesos in bribes in the course of this scandal and of embezzling around 640 million pesos himself during his tenure as MP. However, shortly after he was arrested, he was released due to his age and health. A lawsuit against Enrile on charges of looting and bribery is pending.

Web links

Commons : Juan Ponce Enrile  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Senate homepage
• rulers.org

Individual evidence

1. ↑ CNN Philippines: Enrile Edsa Revolution (English), accessed March 22, 2017
2. ↑ senate.gov.ph: list of senators , accessed on March 22, 2017
3. ↑ The back and forth in the life of Juan Ponce Enrile , accessed on March 22, 2017
4. ↑ inquirer.net: 28 government members involved in fraud , accessed on March 23, 2017
5. ↑ inquirer.net: Enrile helpers banned from the government (English), accessed on March 22, 2017