Manila (AFP) - Juan Ponce Enrile, a shrewd political operator who helped usher in the darkest repression of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos’s rule, died on Thursday at the age of 101, his daughter said.

Enrile, who was being treated for pneumonia, died at home at 4:21 pm (0821 GMT) “surrounded by our family”, Katrina Ponce Enrile said on her Facebook page, adding there would be a public viewing.

Known as the architect of the brutal martial law used to crush opposition to Marcos’s rule, Harvard-educated Enrile was a long-time top adviser to the authoritarian leader.

Enrile later turned on Marcos and was instrumental in sparking the popular 1986 uprising that led to the president’s ouster less than three years after the murder of opposition leader Benigno Aquino.

Enrile switched sides again and helped the Marcos family in their remarkable political comeback after they returned from exile.

After Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the late dictator’s son, won the 2022 presidential election, he named Enrile his chief legal counsel.

“We say goodbye to one of the most enduring and respected public servants our country has ever known,” Marcos said in a statement, adding Enrile “dedicated his life to serving the Filipino people, helping guide the country through some of its most challenging and defining moments”.

Bonifacio Ilagan, head of a group of former dissidents thrown into prison during martial rule, said in a statement the group has “no tears to shed” for a man who “will forever be remembered neither as a patriot nor a statesman, but as one of the chief architects and defenders of tyranny, repression, and corruption in the country”.

Enrile never spent a day behind bars for his role in the Marcos dictatorship.

- ‘A good beginning sours’ -

According to his memoir, Enrile was a widow’s son by a prominent married lawyer. He was born Juanito Furagganan on February 14, 1924.

The boy later took his father’s name and became a respected attorney himself, as well as a close confidant of Marcos who would win the presidency in 1965.

Before becoming defence minister, Enrile held other key posts, including customs chief and justice minister.

Marcos’s order implementing martial law in 1972 cited various acts of terror around the country, including an alleged communist guerrilla assassination attempt on Enrile.

Many years later, Enrile gave differing statements on that key event, saying at one point the claimed ambush was made up, and then writing in his memoir that it had actually happened.

Under martial law, Enrile was the second-most-powerful man in the country, deciding who could be jailed or freed.

Amnesty International estimates Marcos’s security forces either killed, tortured, sexually abused, mutilated or arbitrarily detained tens of thousands of opponents.

More than 11,000 victims have been officially recognised and compensated.

Enrile never apologised for his role in the dictatorship and even defended martial law.

“It was operating well at least from 1972 all the way to 1975, but somehow along the way, just like everything that we do in this country, a good beginning sours,” he told journalists in 2006.

- ‘People Power’ -

By the 1980s, Marcos was ailing, and it was becoming clear that his wife Imelda and her allies were not planning to keep Enrile in the future leadership.

In response, Enrile organised a cabal of disgruntled young military officers into the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM).

The 1983 murder of Aquino by soldiers loyal to Marcos and massive cheating in the 1986 polls caused widespread unrest, further weakening Marcos’s position.

The RAM sought to exploit the situation with a plot to overthrow the Marcos government, but their plan was discovered before it could be launched.

Facing arrest, Enrile and his allies holed up at Manila’s military headquarters and appealed to the public to protect them from an imminent government attack.

Millions of people poured onto the streets, triggering the “People Power” revolt that toppled Marcos, installed Aquino’s widow Corazon as president, and restored democracy.

Aquino appointed Enrile as her defence minister, but he stayed in her cabinet for only a short time.

He was briefly arrested in 1990, 2001, and 2014, the first two times for alleged involvement in coup plots and the last over the embezzlement of public funds.

Enrile enjoyed a decades-long career as a lawmaker, including as Senate president from 2008 to 2013.

In 2014, he was arrested with two other senators for allegedly receiving bribes as part of a massive corruption scandal.

Citing Enrile’s “fragile health”, the Supreme Court granted him bail in 2015, allowing him to spend his twilight days at home.

A special graft court dismissed the plunder, or massive corruption, charges against Enrile last year, and last month acquitted him of the remaining graft cases against him.