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#OnThisDay September 22, 1972, President Ferdinand E. Marcos meets with US Ambassador Henry A. Byroade at noontime. After their meeting, Byroade sends a three-page cable, classified Secret or ExDis, to Washington, in which he concludes that “for the time being, possibly for next week or so, likelihood of martial law declaration has now lessened.”[1]

As Byroade finishes the final paragraphs of his cable, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, at Camp Aguinaldo, places a call to President Marcos, telling the President that it is time to act: now or never. Within an hour, a colonel arrives at Enrile’s office with the presidential orders. Enrile heads home. As the DND Secretary’s blue Ford with tinted windows, accompanied by a heavily armed security details, rounds the back of the Wack Wack Golf Course, gunmen open fire. Bullets riddle the right front and back doors of the Ford and shatter the windshield. Enrile, however, is not in the Ford, having decided to ride in his security car. Marcos and Enrile had staged the “ambush,” as the final justification for martial law.[1] [note]

[note: One of Marcos' justifications for the declaration of martial law that year was terrorism or the communist threat. He cited the alleged ambush attack on Enrile's car on September 22, 1972 as pretext for martial law. At the time, many people doubted that the attack actually took place. Marcos, in his diary entry for September 1972, wrote that Enrile had been ambushed near Wack-Wack that night. He says "it was a good thing he was riding in his security car as a protective measure… This makes the martial law proclamation a necessity."[2]

On the contrary, Oscar Lopez, a resident of Wack-Wack who lived along the street of the alleged ambush, stated that he had heard a lot of shooting on the night of the incident. When he went out to see what was happening, he saw only an empty car riddled with bullets. Lopez' driver, who had happened to witness the incident, stated that "there was a car that came and stopped beside a Meralco post. Some people exited the car, and another car came by to shoot at the car, to make it look like it was ambushed."[3]

The doubts surrounding the alleged ambush were further confirmed in a press conference on February 23, 1986 when then Lieutenant General Fidel Ramos and Enrile admitted that the attack was staged in order to justify the declaration of martial law. Both radio and television media covered this and millions of Filipinos witnessed the said confession. Furthermore, in several interviews, Enrile was reported as indeed confirming that the attempted assassination was faked in order to justify the declaration of Martial Law.[4][5]

Conflicting accounts arise in his book, Juan Ponce Enrile: A Memoir. In the said book, Enrile accuses his political opponents of spreading rumors of the ambush being staged despite having already admitted several times that the attempted assassination was indeed fake. In some TV interviews in 2012 and in the book - Juan Ponce Enrile: A Memoir, Enrile denies that the ambush was fake.][6]

References:
[1] Manuel D. Duldulao, A Century of Philippine Legislature, 2007, Vol. II, p. 574
[2] "Declaration of Martial Law". Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines
[3] "Declaration of Martial Law". Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines
[4] Inquirer Research (October 8, 2012). "True or false: Was 1972 Enrile ambush faked?". Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved December 23, 2019
[5] Jack Reed, "Enrile and Ramos: Former loyalists turn on Marcos", United Press International, February 22, 1986
[6] Aenlle, Mike (March 25, 2018). "Juan Ponce Enrile, A Memoir". The Book Lover blog. Retrieved December 19, 2019; GMA News To Go; Quick Response Team (QRT), GMA News, 2012
7. Wikimedia Commons

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#MartialLaw #MartialRule
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