MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Juan Ponce Enrile, the Philippine defense chief in a martial-law era notorious for human rights atrocities, democratic setbacks and plunder who later broke off from dictator Ferdinand Marcos then helped topple him in the “people power” uprising in 1986, died Thursday. He was 101.
Katrina Ponce Enrile said her father died at home surrounded by family as he had wished, but did not immediately provide other details. She has said her father had been confined in a medical intensive care unit for pneumonia treatment.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the incumbent Philippine leader and son and namesake of the authoritarian ruler Enrile helped overthrow, praised Enrile and said his death “marks the close of a chapter in our nation’s history.”
“We say goodbye to one of the most enduring and respected public servants our country has ever known,” Marcos said in a statement. “For over 50 years, Juan Ponce Enrile dedicated his life to serving the Filipino people, helping guide the country through some of its most challenging and defining moments.”
SELDA, a group of former political detainees during the martial law period, said Enrile was the defense chief when military and police forces “arrested, tortured, and caused the enforced disappearance of thousands of activists, students, journalists and ordinary citizens…and yet, until the end of his life, he neither acknowledged nor apologized for the atrocities committed under his watch.”
One of the country's most prominent lawyers, Enrile was also one of the longest-serving officials in Philippine history with a career in government that spanned for more than a half century. He had served in various posts under the elder Marcos starting when the latter won the presidency in 1965. In 2022, the current president appointed Enrile as chief presidential legal counsel, at age 98.
Among the departments Enrile led were justice and finance, including a stint as Bureau of Customs commissioner. He served three terms in the Senate, where he became president from 2008 to 2013. He was a former member of the House of Representatives to represent the northern province of Cagayan, where he was born on Feb. 14, 1924.
In 2014, Enrile surrendered after he was indicted and ordered arrested by the anti-graft Sandiganbayan court for allegedly receiving huge kickbacks from a scam that diverted millions of dollars from anti-poverty and development funds allotted to lawmakers. He denied the accusation and enlisted top-notch lawyers to defend him.
After a year of detention, the Supreme Court granted Enrile’s petition for bail in 2015 for humanitarian reasons. He was cleared of the plunder charge last year by the court for insufficient evidence, then cleared of graft charges just last month after a lengthy trial.
“I knew all along that I’ll be acquitted because I haven’t done anything,” Enrile, then already a centenarian, said.
His most controversial role, however, was as head of the Department of National Defense, where he was reappointed in 1972, the year the elder Marcos placed the entire Philippines under martial rule purportedly to defend the country from increasingly violent left-wing demonstrations in the capital Manila and growing threats from Marxist guerillas in the countryside and Muslim separatist insurgents in the south, homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation.
Opponents, however, accused Marcos then of declaring martial rule, a year before his term was to expire, to prolong his grip on power amid growing discontent over his rule and allegations of massive corruption and cronyism. Marcos padlocked Congress and newspaper offices, ordered the arrest of political opponents and activists and ruled by decree. Thousands of Filipinos were incarcerated, tortured and disappeared. Some have never been found to this day.
A growing rift between Enrile's camp and Marcos and his loyalist generals prompted the defense chief to break away from the ailing president after a coup attempt staged by Enrile-aligned military officers was discovered and failed. Fidel Ramos, then a top official of the now-defunct police force known as the Philippine Constabulary, also withdrew his support from Marcos. Ramos became president in 1992 and died in 2022.
Millions of Filipinos converged in February 1986 at the EDSA highway to shield Enrile and Ramos from Marcos’ loyal forces. Marcos was driven with his family and cronies into U.S. exile.
The 1986 “people power” uprising became a harbinger of change in authoritarian regimes. Decades since then, however, poverty, stark inequality between the rich and poor and a failure to address past wrongdoings have remained deeply entrenched, fanning political and social divisions.
In the tumultuous post-dictatorship era, Enrile was detained twice after being linked to several military rebellions, including mutinies against President Corazon Aquino, the pro-democracy leader who succeeded Marcos.
The Department of National Defense, where Enrile had been the longest-serving chief, flew the Philippine flag at half-staff in tribute to him Thursday.
“His long and storied career in public service marked profound changes in our nation’s history,” the department said in a statement. “His legacy in our country’s politics and governance will always be remembered.”
FILE- Philippine Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile delivers his opening remarks at the start of the impeachment trial for Philippine Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona in Manila, Philippines, Jan. 16, 2012. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez, Pool, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are rushing higher worldwide, and oil prices are easing Wednesday as hopes build that the war with Iran could end soon. That's even though some of the signals investors saw as hopeful are already under dispute, and several prior bouts of optimism in financial markets quickly got undercut by continued, fierce fighting in the war.
The S&P 500 rallied 0.9% and added to its leap from the day before, which was its best since last spring. That followed even bigger gains for stock markets across Europe and Asia, including an 8.4% surge in South Korea, which were catching up to Wall Street’s rally from Tuesday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 294 points, or 0.6%, as of 2:08 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.3% higher.
Oil prices also fell back toward $100 per barrel after President Donald Trump said late Tuesday that the U.S. military could end its offensive in two to three weeks.
That added to optimism following a couple tenuous signals of hope from earlier Tuesday that Wall Street latched onto, including a news report quoting Iran’s president as saying that it has “the necessary will to end the war” as long as certain requirements are met, including “guarantees to prevent a recurrence of aggression.”
The worry on Wall Street has been that the war may last a long time and keep oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf out of global markets, which could create a brutal blast of inflation.
But hope has been quick to reverse to doubt on Wall Street, triggering manic swings back and forth for financial markets since the war with Iran began. Trump has also made statements that lifted markets, only to see the gains quickly disappear after increasing his military threats.
Shortly before Wall Street began trading on Wednesday, Trump claimed in a post on his social media network that Iran “has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!”
“We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!”
But Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, quickly called that claim “false and baseless,” according to a report on Iranian state television.
Oil prices also remain high, even if they’ve eased recently. The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, was sitting at $101.51 following its declines, which is still up from roughly $70 before the war began.
U.S. gasoline prices rose again overnight to a national average of $4.06 per gallon, according to the auto club AAA.
Iran, meanwhile, hit an oil tanker off the coast of Qatar and Kuwait’s airport on Wednesday while airstrikes battered Tehran as the fighting continued. Iran also continues to hold a grip on the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes during peacetime.
“De-escalation hopes have given markets a lift, but we think the effects of the war would, in many cases, persist even if the war did end soon,” Thomas Mathews, head of markets, Asia Pacific at Capital Economics, said in a research note Wednesday.
“It’s worth thinking through how markets might fare if the war were to end ‘very soon,’” he wrote. “Do markets have further to recover if sentiment continues to improve? The answer is almost certainly yes.”
The White House said Trump will deliver a public address Wednesday evening on the Iran war.
On Wall Street, most stocks rose as Big Tech powered the move higher. Gains of 3.8% for Alphabet and 0.8% for Nvidia were two of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500.
Eli Lilly climbed 5.1% after U.S. regulators approved its GLP-1 pill for weight loss.
Such gains have pulled the S&P 500, which sits at the heart of many 401(k) accounts, back to within 5.6% of its all-time high set early this year. Just on Monday, the index briefly neared a 10% drop from its record, a steep-enough fall that professional investors have a name for it: a “correction.”
Nike sank 14.5% even though it reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. Analysts said it gave some lackluster financial forecasts.
Hasbro fell 4.8% after the toy company found someone had gained unauthorized access to its computer network and is working to assess the full impact.
Energy companies fell broadly as oil prices eased. Exxon Mobil slumped 5% and Chevron fell 4.9%.
In stock markets abroad, indexes leaped more than 2% in France and Germany. Asian markets had even bigger gains.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 jumped 5.2% after a survey showed business sentiment for major Japanese manufacturers improved despite worries about the Iran war.
In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady after a report said U.S. retailers made more money in February than economists expected. A separate report said U.S. manufacturing growth last month was slightly faster than economists expected.
The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.32% from 4.30% late Tuesday.
AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed.
James Conti works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Philip Finale works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders work at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader reacts near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A screen displays financial information on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
