The Enrile issue

IT COMES to us as a great surprise to learn that somebody has dared to question the veracity of some of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s data in his autobiography published last September. But it was something that should be expected since the autobiography included events that occurred in recent history. These are still fresh in most Filipinos’ memory.

Many of those people are still living today, and so they can attest to the truth or falsity of some of the things that Enrile claimed to have happened in the mid-1970s at the height of Marcos’s martial rule. Those were events that Enrile claimed happened.

These could not be hidden as bits of knowledge by the masses about their recent past.

They could not be stopped, therefore, from questioning what Enrile wrote.

A retired general who was a member of the group that investigated the ambush of the car of then Defense minister Enrile, said that he knew early on that the ambush was faked. And he could prove it because the bullet holes on the car was well aligned, which “defies logic." The retired general, a candidate for the Senate, claims that the bullet holes “conveniently missed all the occupants.”

The same retired general also said that he was a member of the military’s intelligence group so he had access to classified information. And he asserted that when reading Enrile’ autobiography, he stopped when he reached the portion of the ambush. He claims the book was full of lies.

Enrile did not answer the charges. It is said that he chose to go on with his activities as the opposition campaign leader.

I recall that the talk in the country at the time of the incident was that then president Ferdinand Marcos was in dire need of reasons to justify his declaration of martial rule, hence the “faked" ambush of Enrile’s car. I recall that at the time, I was designated by then Department of Information (DPI) secretary Kit Tatad as its regional chief here. I held temporary office at the Capitol, thanks to then governor Osmundo Rama.

Enrile had at the time become a prominent personality in FM’s politics, and martial rule administration. As a student, he was a campus figure in the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman. Hence, it was only natural that he would become a close ally of another UP-grown lawyer and political figure, Marcos. In any case, what they have both become now should not be taken as a commentary on the UP where they both came.

Let the UP stand as an institution that trains outstanding leaders for the Republic. A fact that does not defy logic at all.