The then Senate President Edgardo Angara invited me to head the newly created Senate Tax and Research Office. But there was a big problem. The Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile did not want me. “She comes from the Department of Finance and has a lot of baggage.” And so I lost the position and stayed with the Department of Finance. But the problem remained. How could I establish rapport with the Senator?
Luck smiled on me when the Senator held a committee hearing in Cebu. Our plane was delayed for several hours. I took courage to sit beside him and engaged him in a conversation. I told him that my father worked as an attorney in the law firm of his dad, Dewitt, Perkins and Enrile. It is as if the snow melted. He took me in his confidence from that day on.