The news of Juan Ponce Enrile’s passing at 101 rippled through social media faster than most breaking news alerts. People reacted in wildly different ways: some offered condolences, others dusted off old family stories about curfews, raids, or uncles who never came home, while a few young Filipinos asked aloud—“Should we mourn him the same way the Senate did?” That simple question captures the tension surrounding his death. It is not cruelty. It is clarity. When someone like Enrile—whose life touched so many corners of our history—passes on, the real task is to face the full story, not just the parts he wanted remembered. Any social studies teacher or student paper adviser knows this dilemma well. When a complicated figure exits, we’re not asked to praise or attack, only to tell the truth. For educators who guard our shared memory, honesty matters. Without it, history becomes a buffet where we pick only what feels good and ignore what once hurt us.
There is no denying that Enrile was brilliant. Even critics admitted that he had the legal acumen to navigate the thorniest of political storms. His early life reads like a classic “from the province to the capital” narrative familiar to many educators who once taught a student from humble origins whose grit rewrote their destiny. Enrile finished his pre-law and law degrees with honors at the Ateneo de Manila University and University of the Philippines, secured top marks in the bar, and even obtained a graduate degree from Harvard. In a different timeline, he might have been remembered the way we remember scholars who sharpened the country’s institutions. But power has a way of reorienting destinies. When he began working closely with Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in the 1960s, his brilliance was placed inside a system where talent did not simply rise; it was weaponized. According to scholars such as Manapat (1991), Enrile’s loyalty and legal dexterity quickly made him indispensable to Marcos’ inner circle. This partnership, at first administrative and intellectual, evolved into something heavier, darker, and more consequential than law books or public lectures.
The turning point came in the early 1970s when Enrile, as defense secretary, became a central actor in the machinery that built Martial Law. Historical records, including those compiled by Amnesty International (1977) and the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP, 1980s), consistently identify his office as one of the primary administrative engines of arrest, detention, and surveillance during the 14-year dictatorship. Teachers who grew up hearing their parents whisper about classmates who “suddenly disappeared” or relatives who returned from the camps with eyes that no longer matched their age often connect these memories with the policies crafted and implemented under Enrile’s authority. This is why remembering him solely for his role in the 1986 uprising is both incomplete and dangerous. It conveniently places a spotlight on one heroic hour while leaving the preceding years in the dark. The alleged ambush on his car in September 1972—used by Marcos as justification to sign Proclamation 1081—was later admitted by Enrile himself, in multiple interviews leading to EDSA, to have been staged. This is not folklore. It is documented by journalists, including those referenced in the work of Saguisag (2014), who called the contradictions “terminological inexactitudes.” The point is not vengeance. It is accountability through the truth.
Even after Martial Law, the narrative becomes more labyrinthine. Enrile’s dramatic break with Marcos during the four days of EDSA is a chapter that many Filipinos grew up hearing in classrooms. Teachers leaned on that story because it showed, at least on the surface, that people in power can choose conscience over position. But as scholars like Lasco (2025) note, longevity sometimes distorts legacy. What happened after EDSA was not a serene path toward democratic strengthening. Instead, the years that followed saw coup attempts, political maneuverings, and destabilizations that made it difficult for the newly restored democracy to breathe. Enrile’s involvement in the early destabilization of the Aquino administration is not rumor. It is part of the public record, from the 1986 “God Save the Queen” plot to the tensions that led to his removal from the Cabinet. For teachers who spent those years calming classrooms during brownouts and shortages, it was exhausting to see the country wobble again when it had barely found its footing. The trauma of instability is real. The younger generation may not feel the same fear when tanks appear on highways, but those who lived through those fragile years still hold their breath at the memory.
As he grew older, Enrile held positions that made some people trust him and others uneasy. He impressed many during the 2012 Corona impeachment trial. But the goodwill didn’t last long—by 2013 he was linked to the PDAF scam and the fake NGOs tied to Janet Napoles. He was eventually acquitted in 2024, but the story stuck in people’s minds. Students who researched corruption cases for their Araling Panlipunan projects would often ask their teachers, “Why do the biggest cases never seem to end with accountability?” That question says as much about the system as it does about any single person. Enrile’s story, in this sense, is not solely about one man. It is about the conditions that allow a person to return to power again and again, regardless of scandal, age, or public memory.
The difficulty with writing about Enrile’s death is that grief is socially coded. When a former senator dies, a certain script unfolds—half-mast flags, official statements, honorifics, televised tributes. But ordinary Filipinos do not live inside those scripts. They live inside their experiences. A factory worker who still recalls the fear of soldiers barging into their barangay will not react the same way as a young lawyer who admired his sharp questioning during the Corona trial. A guidance counselor whose aunt disappeared in 1975 will not mourn him in the way a political ally might. A public school principal in Iloilo who had to manage tensions during coup rumors in the late 1980s will feel a different texture of memory from someone who only knew him from his late-career Facebook posts. This diversity of reactions is not disrespect. It is recognition that a public life creates public consequences. And, as ethics literature often notes (Beauchamp & Childress, 2013), moral evaluation is most authentic when it considers both intention and impact.
It is tempting to narrate Enrile’s life as a cycle of rise, fall, and reinvention—a kind of political odyssey shuttling between power and survival. But that cycle, when stripped of embellishment, also reveals what political scientists describe as the infrastructure of impunity. His ability to outlive legal cases, rebuild influence, and remain central to power well into his late nineties is not solely due to personal brilliance. It is also due to a political culture that rewards resilience more than remorse, and reinvention more than reckoning. When Enrile returned in 2022 as Chief Presidential Legal Counsel to the son of the dictator he once helped topple, many teachers described the moment in class with an almost weary shrug—“Philippine politics talaga.” But behind the shrug is fatigue. It is difficult to explain to students why a nation can hold both memory and forgetfulness at the same time, why the figures who shaped the nation’s darkest hours can return as senior advisers decades later. This is the emotional terrain educators navigate when discussing Enrile’s legacy—not bitterness, but exhaustion at the circularity of national history.
As the country debates how to remember him, what matters most is the discipline of complete memory. Remember the few moments when he stood on the right side of history—EDSA 1986, the vote to end US bases, the clarity at some points of legislative leadership. But remember, too, the weight of the years that brought suffering: documented torture cases, extrajudicial killings, warrantless arrests, forced disappearances, and the decline of institutions under Martial Law; the early destabilizations of the Aquino government; the corruption allegations; the legal inconsistencies; the shifting alliances that shaped national trajectories. Memory, like character formation, requires the courage to see things as they are. This is the same principle educators try to impart to students: that growth requires truth, that accountability is not the opposite of compassion, and that complexity is not a burden but a path to understanding.
In the end, the question, “Should we mourn Enrile?” is not a test of patriotism. It is a test of honesty. Mourning is personal; memory is collective. One can acknowledge his sharp intellect without overlooking the human rights violations during the era he helped architect. One can recognize his role in EDSA without erasing his role in the machinery that made EDSA necessary. His longevity can be admired, but it isn’t proof of innocence. A life as big and complicated as Enrile’s doesn’t call for applause or anger—it calls for truth, spoken without malice. Death closes a door, but not the conversation about what his choices meant. What remains is the task of making sure the next generation does not inherit only the edited version of his story. Because remembering fully is the only way a country moves forward without repeating the same shadows.
Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.
