Juan Ponce Enrile Will Live Forever
Philippine history is marking a milestone today as Juan Ponce Enrile turns 100 years old.
Younger readers not familiar with history will know Enrile more from the hundreds of memes on the internet referencing his age (like the one with him riding a dinosaur) or the jokes circulated on thousands of chat groups (like the one about him advising Emilio Aguinaldo about declaring independence from Spain in 1898). Did you know that two weeks ago that there was an early birthday party in his house to celebrate his upcoming hundredth? Seems that the organizers were not sure he would make it to his birthday and wanted a chance to celebrate with him while he still could. Drum roll please.
Jokes aside, I’m told there really was a party in his house a few weeks ago. A guest at the party told me that Enrile was enjoying himself, holding court and talking politics, eating lechon, and celebrating like someone 30 or even 40 years younger. Take note that 30 or 40 years younger than Enrile still qualifies you as a senior citizen (okay enough with the witticisms).
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Sure, his hearing and eyesight have deteriorated, he doesn’t get around as much as he used to, he may not be a senator or Defense minister anymore and whatever ambitions he has had about the presidency have long been abandoned, but he is far from retired. As Chief Presidential Legal Counsel, he is an active member of President Ferdinand R. Marcos’ Cabinet, attending meetings and weighing in on policy and politics. His opinions, expressed in those meetings, still matter. In the year 2024, 100 years after he was born, Juan Ponce Enrile remains relevant.
How does he do it? What’s the secret to his longevity? He gets asked that all the time and when he has deigned to indulge his questioners how he manages to stay relatively fit and active, he has attributed it to stem cell therapy, relatively clean living, and, as he once told me himself, a daily tablespoon of virgin coconut oil. During the 1970s, when he was chairman of the Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA) during the term of the first President Marcos, he learned about the health benefits of virgin coconut oil and claimed that he would have a tablespoon of the stuff every morning. Whatever it was, it sure worked for him.
Over the years, in my work as a journalist and a government employee, I have met and interacted with him many times. As a journalist, I have on occasion, been subjected to his displeasure. As a government employee, I have been a recipient of his kindness. In the years I’ve known him I’ve come to have my own theory about why he has lived and thrived so long: the man wants to live forever, and by the sheer force of his personality, he will.
Of course, I don’t mean that literally. Like all of us, Mr. Enrile will return to dust. But unlike many of us, he will be remembered long after he is gone, because whether you like him or not the history of our country cannot be told without many chapters involving him.
His origin story is the stuff of legend. Born the illegitimate son of a wealthy Manila-based lawyer and a young widow based in Cagayan, Enrile grew up poor and with limited prospects until he made his way to Manila and presented himself to his father who embraced him and dramatically changed his circumstances. He went to Harvard Law School and came home and had a thriving law career until he joined the government and rose through the ranks till he caught the attention of President Ferdinand Marcos, who eventually made him Defense minister. He became one of the architects of Martial Law and, after falling out with the Marcoses, launched a coup which eventually morphed into the People Power Revolution that saw the ouster of Marcos and the establishment of the Sixth Republic under President Cory Aquino. Then he tried and failed to topple the Aquino government, was arrested and released, ran for President and lost, and eventually became one of the country’s most powerful and influential senators. He advised every post Martial Law president, including Cory Aquino’s son President Noynoy Aquino, who also had him arrested. Along the way, he made his peace with the Marcos family and even campaigned for Bongbong Marcos when the latter ran for President in 2022.
Whatever one may think of the man, he wasn’t content to simply watch the world pass him by. My theory is that those humble beginnings a hundred years ago stirred something in the young Enrile that insisted that he had to be one of the people who shaped it. I imagine a young Enrile entering Ateneo High School when most boys his age were probably already in college. That overaged illegitimate provincial boy must have been taunted mercilessly by those young urbane elite kids. I imagine all the slights he must have endured being a young dark-skinned man from a third world country being in Harvard at a time when white people didn’t have to hide their contempt for other races.
Those experiences can make a person feel inadequate, left out, and resentful of the world. But surviving and even succeeding despite all of that can also instill in you a sense that you can overcome anything despite having all the odds stacked against you. I suspect all of these experiences conjured in that young man an almost unquenchable ambition to make something of himself and carve an oversized place for himself in his world. Which is exactly what he did. In that way, Juan Ponce Enrile will live forever.
