The family of the late senator Juan Ponce Enrile (JPE) urged those invoking his name to do so out of “genuine respect” after Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano claimed to be close to the late politician.
Katrina Ponce Enrile, the daughter of JPE and Cagayan Economic Zone Authority Administrator, on Thursday, May 14, released a statement on behalf of their family following Cayetano’s claim of being “close” to the late patriarch.
Cayetano was quoted as saying that JPE was among the “two people” he calls his “uncle.”
“I call my titos ‘Tito,’ but I call my blood uncles, ‘Uncle.’ But the only people I call ‘Uncle’ who aren’t related to me are two people, and one of them is JPE because I grew up with him,” he said.
It caught the attention of JPE’s family, which called for “honesty, consistency, and genuine respect” in invoking their father’s name.
“The Cayetano and Enrile families have indeed known each other for many decades, and we do not deny the history and familiarity that existed between them,” the family’s statement read.
“However, genuine relationships are not measured solely by words spoken publicly after a person has passed. They are measured by presence, sincerity, and the quiet acts of respect shown to a grieving family during moments of profound loss,” they added.
They then recalled holding necrological services for JPE in the Senate and at Camp Aguinaldo, noting who attended and who did not.
“Our family could not help but notice who chose to be present — and who did not. For this reason, recent public declarations of closeness, while noted, inevitably strike our family with a certain sadness and disappointment,” they said.
“Our father’s legacy, sacrifices, and decades of service to the nation should never be revisited only when convenient, politically useful, or publicly advantageous. He deserved sincerity in life, dignity in death, and peace in memory,” the family added.
“Despite our personal feelings, we continue to uphold the values of grace and restraint that our father himself carried throughout his long public life. We pray that all who invoke his name do so with honesty, consistency, and genuine respect,” they concluded.
In 2013, Cayetano and JPE exchanged words in the Senate, with Cayetano accusing JPE of being “irritated and angry” with him on a personal level.
Enrile, in turn, revealed that Alan Peter’s father, the late senator Rene Cayetano, had an unpaid debt of P37 million to him.
Rene and JPE were partners in a law firm and were colleagues in the 1980s within the Nacionalista Party.
JPE died on Nov. 13, 2025, at the age of 101.
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He served as the chief presidential legal counsel to President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. from 2022 to 2025.
JPE was implicated in two controversies during his term as a senator, including the decade-defining pork barrel scam, where the Priority Development Assistance Fund was allegedly channeled through ghost organizations and into the pockets of legislators.
