Due diligence

As the 2013 election draws nearer, conscientious voters are duty-bound to know as much about a candidate as they can. An effort to scrutinize public records of incumbent government officials would be a good start.

Some Congressmen/women are aspiring to become Senators. The HOR published the attendance record from January-December 2011, 59 sessions in all.

• Sonny Angara was absent 2 days with notice for local (OB); 3 days without notice; deemed present for 56 days and actually present for 54 out-of-59.

• Jack Ponce-Enrile, Jr., was absent 19 days with notice for local (OB), 2 days without notice; deemed present for 57 sessions, actually present in 30 out-of-59.

• JV Ejercito was absent without notice for 3 days; deemed and actually present 56 out-of-59.

• Teddy Casino was absent 3 days with notice for local (OB); one day without notice; deemed present for 58 sessions, actually present for 55-out-of-59.

You can also search their names and thought-provoking articles could surface. After all, public office comes with public scrutiny.

Published March 21, 2001 in Newsbreak. (http://archives.newsbreak-knowledge.ph/2001/03/21/enriles-father-and-son-act/)

Enriles: Father and son act     by    JET DAMAZO

Juan “Jackie” Castañer Ponce Enrile

Controversial may be the best word to describe Jackie Enrile in his younger years. Those who know him say he has since reformed, even projecting an image independent of his father. This 43-year-old Enrile is running for Congress in Cagayan.

Growing up during martial law with the defense minister for a father can certainly affect one’s lifestyle.  Since he was a high school student at the Ateneo, Jackie Enrile has constantly been surrounded by overprotective bodyguards.  Ironically, his bodyguards’ zeal in protecting him was what brought him trouble.

In a span of six years from the mid-seventies, his name got entangled with three murders. The first one, which happened way back in 1975 when he was 17, involved the death of the son of an ex-military officer, Ernest Robert Lucas, during a soirée in Bel-Air, Makati. The second victim, Ricardo Manalad, Jr., president and general manager of Manalad Trucking Co., was killed at the Stargazer Disco in Silahis Hotel one night in June of 1981. The third, and the least known, incident took place in 1980. It involved the shooting of a certain Santillan, who refused to move his jeep that was blocking the young Enrile’s car. In all three cases, Jackie’s paranoid bodyguards shot the victims when their boy appeared to be threatened. Although Jackie was cleared in all three, suspicions remained in the public mind. He was, after all, the son of the very powerful Juan Ponce Enrile.

The most famous controversy Jackie got involved in, however, had a different storyline—the Alfie Anido suicide case in 1982. The actor was reportedly courting Jackie’s younger sister, Katrina. The story goes that one night, after taking Katrina home from his 22nd birthday party, he took out a .38 caliber Colt revolver and shot himself inside his room. Jackie was seen in Alfie’s house later that night, a circumstance that placed him under a cloud of suspicion. Until today, a lot of questions surround Alfie’s death.

Juan Ponce Enrile

Martial law catapulted reelectionist Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile to power, and, for many people, the 1986 Edsa revolution turned him into a hero. After the people power revolt, he was appointed defense secretary by President Corazon Aquino but was ousted in November 1986 for suspected complicity in the failed “God Save the Queen” coup by the Reform the AFP Movement (RAM).

Enrile’s ties with RAM go way back to its beginnings in the Marcos’ regime, where he encouraged his staff, led by a young colonel, Gregorio Honasan, to organize. Supposedly, the original plan was to overthrow Marcos and for Enrile to declare a junta composed of himself, Corazon Aquino, Manila Archbishop Jaime Cardinal Sin, and Fidel Ramos, among others. The plan did not push through.

The change of government in 1986 did not satisfy RAM’s calls for reform. By the middle of 1986, Enrile was actively crusading against Aquino. The perception was that, by doing this, he hoped to expand his political base, which he needed to counter government inquiry into his supposed ill-gotten wealth and into alleged human rights abuses of officers close to him. Thus, operation “God Save the Queen” was born. The plot was to begin with “surgical operations” in which eight prominent personalities considered by RAM to be either leftists or grafters would be assassinated. The result they wanted was for the Marcos-era parliament to be reconvened, with Enrile as prime minister and Aquino as a titular head.

The coup failed when Ramos publicly opposed the movement and Enrile was booted out of office. Since 1987, elections have kept Enrile in politics, both in the Senate and in the House of Representatives.

This May, Enrile is taking a crack again at another term in the Senate, running under the banner of the pro-Estrada Puwersa ng Masa.

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The Australian daily, The Age, carried this story on the World News page published June 29, 1981.

Man Shot ‘as he pleaded’

A soldier assigned as a bodyguard assigned to the son of the Philippine Defence Minister shot a Filipino businessman said to have been on his knees pleading for his life, Press reports said today.

The report said the bodyguard shot Ricardo Manalad, 28, five times after he allegedly stepped on the foot of Mr. Jackie Ponce Enrile outside a disco in the penthouse of one of Manila’s plush hotels. Mr. Manalad later died.

Mr. Enrile is the son of Philippine Defence Minister Juan Ponce Enrile.

It was the fourth incident involving the Defence Minister’s son and his bodyguard. Last year reports said a similar group headed by the young Enrile broke into a party and in September his bodyguards were tagged by suburban police as the suspected killers of two Philippine navy men who encountered the group in the car park of a Manila nightclub.

A few years ago Mr. Enrile and his bodyguards also figured in an incident involving breaking into a private party which resulted in the killing of a teenage schoolboy. AAP-AFP

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