A claim made on the Senate floor about one of the country’s most prominent political figures has drawn a sharp correction from his family, with Cagayan Economic Zone Authority Administrator Katrina Ponce Enrile insisting that the public record on her late father be handled accurately.
The dispute centers on what former senator Juan Ponce Enrile was actually accused of decades ago. According to his daughter, the charge was not rebellion in plain terms but “rebellion complexed with murder” — a formulation she said the Supreme Court eventually struck down as a crime that does not exist under Philippine law. On that basis, she argued in a Facebook post on Wednesday that Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano’s characterization fell short of the truth, calling it “not entirely accurate.”
She framed her objection less as a political quarrel than as a plea for fairness toward someone unable to answer for himself. “As his daughter, it is difficult to watch a man who can no longer defend himself be reduced to abbreviated versions of events that are readily available for verification,” she wrote. Enrile died in November 2025 at the age of 101.
Katrina also took issue with what she described as a recurring habit. “Senator Cayetano seems to have a penchant for using my father’s case as an example. That’s his choice,” she said. “But if my father’s name is to be invoked repeatedly in public discourse, then I hope the facts are treated with the same care and respect that we would want afforded to anyone else’s history.”
The remark she was responding to surfaced during a tense standoff at the Senate on June 1, when authorities moved to serve an arrest warrant on Senator Jinggoy Estrada over plunder charges tied to the flood control scandal. Cayetano had pressed Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla to let Estrada step outside the chamber before any arrest, invoking a 1990s episode in which then-Senate President Jovito Salonga shielded Enrile. “(Estrada) can be arrested right there. Just outside the gate, we’re gonna walk (for) five minutes. It’s never been done. Salonga stood up for Enrile. Ang kalaban si Cory, ang kaso rebellion. Anong ginawa? They walked out,” Cayetano said. Remulla rejected the request, telling him the Senate had forfeited that courtesy when Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa earlier slipped away while supposedly under its custody.
For Katrina, the heart of the matter lies in precision rather than precedent. She closed her statement by pointing back to the documentary trail surrounding the case against her father. “A man who can no longer defend himself deserves at least that much. The records speak for themselves. Perhaps it’s time to let them. Surely that is not too much for a daughter to ask,” she said.
