Key difference

May asim pa, then-89-year old Senator Juan Ponce Enrile said with a wink. He scoffed at “romantic   links” to his then chief of staff, Atty. Jessica Lucila “Gigi” Reyes.

However, the English language fails to capture the nuances of JPE’s Filipino wisecrack. Loosely translated, JPE’s remark claims his libido was still on overdrive, thank you.

But what a difference a non-bailable plunder charge can make. JPE’s counsels submitted three medical certificates that the senator is ailing. He gobbles 23 pills daily. No, Viagara is not included. Confinement in even former officers’ room would be life-threatening. 

The Philippine National Police reserved a room at the PNP General hospital. It measures 3 meters by 4 meters, has bathroom and shower, a large glass window without bars. It is air conditioned.

“All animals are equal,” George Orwell wrote in his 1945 allegorical novel: “Animal Farm”. But “some animals are more equal than others”. The late Senators Benigno Aquino, Jr. and Jose Diokno could have told us as much.

Both were secretly helicoptered to Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija. They were held in solitary confinement in cramped cells, shut from sunlight with potties for toilet needs. Eyeglasses were taken, so were belts in a dictatorship where JPE was main enforcer.

“What’s so special about Enrile?  Other elderly prisoners rot in regular jails,” Michelle Estor of the Scrap Pork Network said. It was Enrile himself who said that he remains strong after stem cell treatments. Was JPE’s statement that he was “ready to die in jail”, drama?

Born in Cagayan as Juanito Furagganan, JPE took on the name of his father: lawyer Alfonso Ponce Enrile. He graduated from UP, then Harvard law school. His career oscillated from pillar of the Marcos dictatorship to one of 1986 People Power leaders.

President Corazon Aquino sacked him for plotting coups. “God Save the Queen” would have installed JPE as president. He slumped into disgrace as the coups crumbled. He towered over the impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona. And in June last year, he was toppled as Senate president.

JPE turned 90 last Valentine’s Day. Do “intimations of mortality?” haunt him, an editor-friend asked. He needs to rewrite memoirs launched in 2012, before the inevitable curtains fall. Titled “Juan Ponce Enrile,” this 754-page book glowingly details his relationship with the past six presidents.

But it smudged key incidents, like shaving votes in 1995 to grab a winning 11^th Senate slot. The Electoral Tribunal confirmed, years later, that Sen. Aquilino Pimentel won. JPE slumped into the losers club as No. 15.

That decision was overtaken by events. Pimentel won the next elections. And the Court, seven years later, ruled the case as “moot and academic.” However, Pimentel wedged into the political vocabulary a new term for vote shaving: dagdag-bawas.

“Can JPE rewrite his flawed memoirs before his term peters out in 2016?” Like all of us, our friend didn’t foresee today’s brawl to stave off arrest. A rewrite of JPE’s memoirs would call for end-to-end revision of what Rappler editor Chay Hofileña calls a tale of “hypocrisy and contradictions.”

In his book, JPE claims he was surprised that Marcos used his alleged Wack-Wack subdivision ambush as trigger for martial law imposition. Yet, the Official Gazette quotes Enrile, after the People Power I, saying: “it had been staged by Marcos to justify martial law.” So did Inquirer on Feb. 23, 1986 and the Age of Australia.

“People have different impressions about me,” Enrile wrote. “So let it be.” Hofileña, however, wonders: “Question is, will the truth-tellers just let it be?”

Ferdinand Marcos Jr. meanwhile inserted himself into the media saying he’d consider running in 2016. Imelda Marcos says nothing better could happen to the country.  Do they think people engrossed with the Sandiganbayan trials forget that $354-million contempt judgment, slammed by US Court of Appeals (9th circuit) against them?

The Marcoses tried to secretly ship out of the US, paintings and other artworks, from the contested holdings for a 25 percent tax free share, the court found. That would sandbag an injunction against tapping estate assets while the jury deliberated.

“Contumacious conduct”, the US magistrate fumed. It “caused direct harm” to martial law victims. The court whacked the Marcoses with a daily fine of $100,000 dollars. When the contempt order expired, the tab totaled $353.6 million. And that’s just for starters.

How will the JPE tragedy—no other word for it—play out? Inquirer’s Randy David thinks JPE will wind up in hospital comfort in a system rigged for the powerful.

Still, the “most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor. George Bernard Shaw wrote. It was comedian Will Rogers who summed it up best. “When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad you did do well—that’s memoirs.”