Before he passed away on November 13, 2025, he avoided death numerous times, and on some occasions, he even reshaped the country to do it.
If you were in the Philippines at any point over the last several decades, there is a high chance that you were affected by the life of Juan Ponce Enrile.
It was a long life, mind you. Before he died, Enrile held the distinction of being among the few Filipinos who lived alongside every person who had ever been known as President of the Philippines.
He was born on Valentine’s Day in 1924, as far as official records are concerned—nearly 40 years before Emilio Aguinaldo, the first president of the country, died of heart complications. Decades later, other presidents would pass away, including those much younger than he was.
His longevity became a running gag in local pop culture. On the third season of Drag Race Philippines, for example, one contestant, Tita Baby, dressed as the Grim Reaper and joked about having a hard time catching him. When Thanos wiped out half the universe in Avengers: Endgame, memes quickly circulated of Enrile laughing, unaffected by the snap. There were edited photos of him posing with a “pet dinosaur,” fake quote cards claiming he arrived early to the Last Supper, and countless other jokes playing off his supposed immortality.
Enrile, however, was not immortal—and his life was no laughing matter.
Born Juanito Furagganan in Gonzaga, Cagayan, he began life as the impoverished, illegitimate child of a mestizo lawyer and a fisherman’s stepdaughter. He would go on to become one of the most influential figures in Philippine politics. Throughout his lifetime, the Philippines went to war, became the rising star of Asia, fell into a dictatorship, rose again through a revolution, and endured numerous calamities. It even experienced a global pandemic so severe that when he fell ill because of it, publications prepared his obituary. He survived all of that, of course—but not through sheer luck or good health.
Throughout his life, Enrile made choices that preserved both his well-being and his power. On several occasions, he survived because he did what was necessary to do so. He made decisions that affected not only his own life but the lives of many around him. For better or worse, his existence is a thesis on the value and potency of one life—something his career was often accused of disregarding.
From Soldier to Commanding Officer
Among Enrile’s earliest brushes with death lay the groundwork for the direction his life would take.
It began early. His mother, Petra Furagganan, sent him to live with a distant relative so he could receive an education. During these formative years, he earned a scholarship to the Cagayan Valley Institute in Aparri. There, four wealthier schoolmates attacked him, supposedly because they believed he was courting a girl one of them fancied.
Enrile denied this years later, saying he merely tutored the girl in math. Nevertheless, they attacked him with knives, and he survived—supposedly thanks to some level of martial arts training that allowed him to parry their blows. He then jumped out of a window to save himself.
His physical wounds healed, but the impact lasted far longer.
Enrile said he didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer or the influence to seek justice. The school claimed he provoked the fight, and he was expelled. Recalling this incident, he later told reporters that it drove him to become a lawyer. Having faced injustice, he longed for the capacity to prevent such things from happening again.
That dream, however, had to wait. World War II arrived, and at 17, he apparently joined the guerrillas to fight for the country, nearly dying again after being captured, tortured, and imprisoned by the Japanese. During this time, fate led him to meet his half-siblings—the children of his wealthy biological father, Alfonso Ponce Enrile—who were evacuating from Manila. When they told their father of his existence, Alfonso found him, made peace with him, legally changed his name, and set him on the path to fulfilling his ambitions.
From here, Enrile’s ascent began in the classrooms he approached with the same ferocity that would later mark his political life. He graduated cum laude from Ateneo de Manila in 1949, then repeated the feat at the University of the Philippines College of Law, where he finished near the top of his class and earned a perfect score in mercantile law on the 1953 bar exam. A scholarship brought him to Harvard, where he completed an LL.M. and trained in international tax law—an expertise that would prove useful in the company he would soon keep, including Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
In 1964, he became Marcos’s personal lawyer. When Marcos captured the presidency the following year, Enrile’s legal portfolio expanded, and so did his proximity to power. By the mid-60s, he had quietly slipped into the innermost ring of Marcos’s political universe, where skill—and loyalty—were both currency and weapon. As Marcos consolidated power, so did Enrile—first as Justice Secretary, then as Defense Minister. During this period he also became one of the richest men in the Philippines, a status that allowed him to weather the economic decline that slowly unfolded under Marcos’s rule.
By 1972, worsening poverty, corruption allegations, and various social issues had driven people to the streets. Mostly led by students, protests against Marcos had become regular events. Then came another moment when Enrile’s life was supposedly in danger.
On the night of September 22, 1972, Enrile’s car was reportedly ambushed near Wack Wack subdivision in Mandaluyong, close to what is now Ortigas. According to the Marcos government, gunmen fired at his vehicle, but no one was hit. By 1986, Enrile would claim the attack was “staged.” Later in life, however, he backpedaled, saying that by “staged” he meant it was a calculated political act—not necessarily fake. Whatever it was, the incident became one of the justifications for something Enrile himself helped craft: Martial Law, one of the darkest periods in Philippine history.
The resulting regime brought mass arrests, especially of Marcos’s critics. It shuttered media and expanded the military. Enrile orchestrated much of it.
This was the apex of his power—a nation subdued, institutions sidelined, and Enrile among the few in control. But beneath that crest lurked rising discontent and personal disillusionment.
Soon, Marcos’s health began to fail. Support for Corazon Aquino, the widow of his slain rival Benigno Aquino, surged, revealing the weakening of his hold on the populace. Rumors of a military junta to take over after Marcos’s demise reached Enrile, including claims that he would be targeted by rivals within the Marcos camp. Fearing for his survival, he moved accordingly.
He allied with the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM), an underground group of mid-level officers who believed the armed forces had become corrupt, politicized, and dominated by cronies of Marcos—particularly General Fabian Ver, one of Enrile’s rivals. They planned a coup in 1985, but events driven by international pressure intervened.
With pressure from the United States, Marcos called a snap election against Aquino. The process was marred by vote buying, intimidation, and tampering in favor of Marcos. The vote tally was so questionable that COMELEC tabulators walked out. Though Marcos was declared the winner, Aquino, convinced the results were fraudulent, called for civil disobedience—and the public complied.
Inside the military, RAM revived its plan. Enrile and his allies recognized the opportunity created by Aquino’s movement and seized it. Before dawn on February 22, however, the conspiracy was exposed by Ver, derailing the operation a day before its intended execution.
Cornered, Enrile turned to Lt. Gen. Fidel Ramos, head of the constabulary, who agreed to defect with him. By mid-afternoon, the two were holed up in Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame—military redoubts facing each other across Epifanio de los Santos Avenue—bracing for the regime’s counterstrike. At five o’clock, believing he had only an hour to live, Enrile made a move that once again demonstrated his understanding of the Filipino people: he phoned Cardinal Jaime Sin, one of the most prominent religious leaders in the country, and asked for help.
That night, Sin took to Radio Veritas and summoned the public to protect the rebels. Filipinos, already primed by Aquino’s call for civil resistance, poured onto EDSA carrying rosaries, snacks, transistor radios, and a kind of hopeful defiance. Over the next three days, the crowd swelled to nearly two million, forming a human bulwark around the camps.
Aquino, declared the rightful winner of the election by this groundswell, refused Enrile’s request to be sworn in at Camp Crame—this was a civilian revolution, she insisted, not a military redemption. Instead, she took her oath at Club Filipino on February 25. By that evening, the Marcos family had fled Malacañang aboard American military aircraft bound for Hawaii, leaving behind a half-collapsed regime and a country trying to imagine itself anew. Enrile, as in many moments of his long life, was left standing—and found a way to benefit.
Revolutions
The revolution didn’t eject Enrile from politics; it restarted his trajectory. Briefly retained as Defense Secretary under President Aquino, he was soon ousted and later charged with coup plots. Caught between his reformist past and disgruntled officers unhappy with Aquino, he survived once again; the charges were dropped for lack of evidence. His political career endured.
Enrile returned through the ballot box. Elected to the Senate in 1987, and again in later years, he became a legislative mainstay. Why? Partly because many Filipinos did then what many still do now: they breeze through the political process. They enter the booth, see a familiar name, and tick the box. And Enrile, thanks to longstanding alliances, his role in EDSA, and his prominence under Marcos, was a familiar name. Sometimes, studies suggest, that is enough.
This isn’t to say that Enrile had nothing substantive to offer.
In the Senate, he was lauded for legal precision and feared for political cunning. As Senate President under President Aquino’s son, Benigno Jr., he shepherded major laws and presided over the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona—a piece of legislative theater that drew cheers and jeers alike. Once again, he rebranded himself: elder statesman to some, relic of repression to others.
But no trajectory is without turbulence. In 2014, Enrile was charged again—this time with plunder, for allegedly diverting ₱172 million in pork barrel funds. At 90, he surrendered, was jailed, and eventually released on humanitarian grounds. He was too old for prison, in other words; he “survived” because he had lived long enough.
In 2022, the roller coaster came full circle. At 98, Enrile was appointed Chief Presidential Legal Counsel by Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the dictator whose downfall Enrile had once helped engineer. The symbolism was striking: the former architect of Martial Law returning to the palace under the son of the man he once betrayed. His return was not merely personal; it was generational. For many Filipinos, it signaled that history was looping through old tracks—a reminder that some things never change, until they do. And in 2025, Enrile witnessed what many saw as a decisive transition.
Following a bout of pneumonia, surrounded by family, Enrile, for the first and last time in over a hundred years, did not survive.
What continues on is his legacy—all sides of it. In a post on X, his daughter hailed him as a man who served the country. In response, other users posted a clip of Ariana Grande as Glinda burning an effigy of her friend. The context? “No one mourns the Wicked.”
Perhaps. But they will remember him. His name will resonate for years to come, and whenever Philippine history is retold in detail, he will be recalled—for better or worse.
Of course, none of this would have happened had it not been for his choices—good or bad—and the steps he took to survive.
