Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Juan Ponce Enrile is in the intensive care unit of an undisclosed hospital due to pneumonia, according to his daughter, Katrina Ponce Enrile.
“Yes he is po. And the whole family is here with him,” Katrina told One News.
The 101-year old political figure’s condition was earlier disclosed by Senator Jinggoy Estrada during the Senate plenary session yesterday.
Estrada said he was told by his “reliable sources” that the veteran politician has “slim chances of surviving.”
Enrile was appointed as Chief Presidential Legal Counsel in 2022. He had served in the Cabinets of multiple Philippine presidents, including the late Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and Corazon Aquino.
Enrile also finished four senatorial terms, sitting as Senate President from 2008 to 2013.
Earlier in his life, Enrile earned his associate of arts degree cum laude from the Ateneo de Manila University, while finishing his law degree cum laude from the University of the Philippines.
Afterward, he notably topped the Bar examinations (98.75% score, adjusted). He later finished his education with a master of laws from Harvard University.
While serving as the defense secretary of Marcos Sr., Enrile admitted having staged his own ambush to justify the imposition of martial law in 1972. He would deny this in his 2012 book, Juan Ponce Enrile: A Memoir.
In 1985, he would defect from the Marcos Sr. administration and sparked, with then Constabulary chief Fidel Ramos, the four-day EDSA Revolution that ended Marcos’s 13-year authoritarian rule.
Enrile was arrested for plunder in connection with the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) scam and subsequently detained at the Philippine National Police (PNP) General Hospital. In 2021, the Supreme Court would rule in his favor, acquitting him of plunder.
Last month, the Sandiganbayan Special Third Division Enrile, his former chief-of-staff Jessica “Gigi” Reyes, businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles and several others on 15 counts of graft over the alleged misuse of PHP172 million of the former lawmaker’s Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) from 2007 to 2009.
