Former Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile on Friday, Sept. 17 spent a few minutes tinkering on his Facebook account while celebrating 64th wedding anniversary with wife, Cristina, to defend celebrity vlogger Toni Gonzaga from social media bashers.
Enrile, now 97, commiserated with Gonzaga as she bravely fought off critics who berated her featuring on her vlog an interview with former Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., as the nation gets ready to recall the day his father declared Martial Law on September 21, 1972.
“Poor Toni Gonzaga. She is a victim of prejudiced minds -people who took undeserved credit and advantage for the so-called people power revolution of 1986,” Enrile wrote.
He added: “They were totally ignorant of the real facts. They act on the basis of what they heard or imagined.”
As then secretary of national defense, Enrile was known to have planned the martial law regime with Marcos to “save the republic” from the clutches of communist rule.
But 14 years later, he parted ways with Marcos to help launch the 1986 People Power Revolution that resulted to the collapse of the martial law president's administration. Gonzaga recently released her vlog “The Greatest Lesson Bongbong Marcos Learned from his Father” and initially drew the ire of a huge number of critics, many of them accusing her of helping the young Marcos’ next political bid in the 2022 elections.
The harshest criticisms came from political activists, most of them staunch critics of the Marcos dictatorship.
Many, however, resented the timing of the posting of the interview that took place in between the late strongman’s 111th birthday and the 48th anniversary of the declaration of Martial law in the country.
Gonzaga appeared to have turned the tide against critics, especially after she came out with a response that fans and non-fans supported.
“I’ve reached a point in my life where I realized that other people’s perception of me is not my responsibility anymore... I feel like I don’t have anymore, the need to explain, to prove, to defend and to hide,” she said.
The former ABS-CBN star added: “Because I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to defend, I have nothing to prove, I have nothing to explain to anybody because I know who I am inside.”