Senator Juan Ponce Enrile resigned as senate president on Wednesday, calling it a matter of personal honor and dignity over allegations and criticism hurled at him in the run-up to the May elections.
The allegations stemmed from P1.6 million in funds that Enrile apportioned to the offices of 18 senators in December as additional Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses. The offices of four senators received just P250,000. Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago returned the P250,000 and has been Enrile’s critic since then.
In his speech, Enrile referred to “virulent personal attacks against me by a non-candidate Senator who fashions herself as my nemesis and who evidently delights in doing the job.”
Enrile also mentioned a young senator who said the senate president “had not done anything good for this country”, likely in reference to Senator Antonito Trillanes IV. He also mentioned Senate Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, whom he said “accused me of being a thief or a scoundrel.”
Cayetano spoke up against Enrile’s allegedly irregular distribution of the additional MOOE in January. He also said Enrile had blocked him from sitting on the Commission on Appointments because of bad blood from when Enrile was close to then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Cayetano was a member of the House minority.
Enrile retaliated, bringing up millions of pesos that Cayetano’s father, the late Senator Renato Cayetano, borrowed from him.
Enrile said he bore the brunt of public anger over the supposedly improper fund allocations. “I suffered the anger of the public as the media branded all that I had authorized for release to the Senators’ offices last December as my personal ‘cash gifts’ no matter how hard I tried to explain the nature of these disbursements from the Senate’s coffers and my own office’s savings,” he said.
He said he would no longer be anybody’s scapegoat or whipping boy.
Enrile, senate president since November 2004, said the allegations against him affected his son Cagayan Representative Jack Enrile’s run for the Senate.
