page_title: Juan Ponce Enrile
section_title: Career in the Marcos Cabinet
hierarchical_section_title: Juan Ponce Enrile / Career in the Marcos Cabinet
caption_attribution_description: English: Juan Ponce Enrile's bullet-riddled car
context_page_description: Juan Furagganan Ponce Enrile Sr., abbreviated JPE, is a Filipino politician and lawyer. He was a protégé of President Ferdinand Marcos, and served as Justice Secretary and Defense Minister under the Marcos regime. He later became one of the leaders of the 1986 People Power Revolution that drove Marcos from power and into exile. Enrile has continued to be a prominent politician since then; he was Senate President from November 2008 until his resignation on June 5, 2013.
context_section_description: 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 Customs Bureau and the government's insurance commission.
  The Department of National Defense would expand its power when Marcos assumed the presidency in 1965. 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. For almost the entire period of Martial Law, Enrile served officially as the martial law administrator as he was in charge of all the armed forces' services during that time. Furthermore, as early as Marcos' planning and preparation for the declaration of martial law, Enrile was involved. In his memoir, Enrile recalls Marcos' careful preparations. He narrates that as early as December 1969, Marcos instructed him to study the 1935 Constitution, specifically the powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief. Marcos had already foreseen a rise in violence and chaos in the country and wanted to know the exact extent of his powers.
  At the end of January of the following year, Enrile, with help from Efren Plana and Minerva Gonzaga Reyes, submitted the only copy of the report regarding the detailed nature and extent of Martial Law to Marcos. Soon after, Marcos allegedly ordered Enrile to prepare all documents necessary for the implementation of Martial Law in the Philippines. In August 1972, Marcos once again met with Enrile and a few of his other most trusted commanders to discuss tentative dates for the declaration. By September 22, 1972, Marcos announced that he had placed the entire country under Martial Law as of 9 p.m. via proclamation 1081 which, he claimed, he had signed on September 21, 1972.
  One of Marcos' justifications for the declaration of martial law that year was terrorism. He cited the alleged ambush attack on Enrile's car on September 22, 1972 as pretext for martial law. At the time, many people doubted that the attack actually took place. Marcos, in his diary entry for September 1972, wrote that Enrile had been ambushed near Wack-Wack that night. He says "it was a good thing he was riding in his security car as a protective measure… This makes the martial law proclamation a necessity." On the contrary, Oscar Lopez, a resident of Wack-Wack who lived along the street of the alleged ambush, stated that he had heard a lot of shooting on the night of the incident. When he went out to see what was happening, he saw only an empty car riddled with bullets. Lopez' driver, who had happened to witness the incident, stated that "there was a car that came and stopped beside a Meralco post. Some people exited the car, and another car came by to shoot at the car, to make it look like it was ambushed."
  The doubts surrounding the alleged ambush were further confirmed in a press conference on February 23, 1986 when then Lieutenant General Fidel Ramos and Enrile admitted that the attack was staged in order to justify the declaration of martial law. Both radio and television media covered this and millions of Filipinos witnessed the said confession. Furthermore, in several interviews, Enrile was reported as indeed confirming that the attempted assassination was faked in order to justify the declaration of Martial Law. Conflicting accounts arise in his book, Juan Ponce Enrile: A Memoir. In the said book, Enrile accuses his political opponents of spreading rumors of the ambush being staged despite having already admitted several times that the attempted assassination was indeed fake.
  Despite later co
caption: Juan Ponce Enrile's bullet-riddled car
exif: {"Image Software": "Google"}