Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte said Saturday she had hired an assassin to kill the president, his wife and the speaker of the House of Representatives if she herself was killed, in a brazen public threat she said was not a joke.
Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin spoke of an “active threat” against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.. to an elite presidential guard force “for immediate appropriate action.” It was not immediately clear what action would be taken against the vice president.
The Presidential Security Command immediately beefed up security for Marcos and said it considered the vice president’s threat, which was “made so brazenly in public,” a matter of national security.
Security forces said they were “coordinating with law enforcement to detect, deter, and defend against any threats against the President and the First Family.”
Marcos ran with Duterte as his vice-presidential running mate. May 2022 elections and both won landslide victories in a campaign call for national unity.
Aaron Favila / AP
However, the two leaders and their camps quickly fell out over major differences, including in their approach to China’s aggressive actions in the conflict. South China Sea. Duterte resigned from the Marcos cabinet in June as education secretary and head of a counterinsurgency body.
Like his equally frank father, former President Rodrigo Dutertethe vice president has become a vocal critic of Marcos, his wife Liza Araneta-Marcos and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, an ally and cousin of the president, accusing them of corruption, incompetence and political persecution of the Duterte family and his close supporters.
His latest tirade was triggered by the decision of House members allied with Romualdez and Marcos to arrest his chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, accused of obstructing a congressional investigation into possible misuse of his budget as vice president and secretary of education. Lopez was later transferred to the hospital after falling ill and cried when she heard about a plan to temporarily lock her in a women’s prison.
In a pre-dawn online press conference, an angry Sara Duterte accused Marcos of incompetence as president and a liar, as did his wife and the House Speaker, in charged remarks. swear words.
Aaron Favila / AP
Asked about his concerns for her safety, the 46-year-old lawyer suggested there was an unspecified plot to kill her. “Don’t worry about my safety, because I spoke with someone. I said “if I am killed, you will kill BBM, Liza Araneta and Martin Romualdez”. No joke, no joke,’” the vice president said without elaborating and using the initials many use to call the president.
“I gave my order: ‘If I die, don’t stop until you kill them.’ And he said ‘yes,’” the vice president said.
Under the Philippine Penal Code, such public comments can constitute the crime of threatening to cause harm to a person or his family and are punishable by imprisonment and a fine.
Amid political divisions, military chief Gen. Romeo Brawner issued a statement in which he assured that the 160,000-member Armed Forces of the Philippines would remain nonpartisan “with the utmost respect for our democratic institutions and our civil authority”.
“We call for calm and determination,” Brawner said. “We reiterate our need to be united against those who will attempt to break our bonds as Filipinos. »
The vice president is the daughter of Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Dutertewhose police crackdown on drugs when he was mayor and then president left thousands of suspects, mostly minors, dead in murders that the International Criminal Court was investigating as a possible crime against humanity.
The former president has denied authorizing extrajudicial killings as part of his crackdown, but has made conflicting statements. He told a Philippine Senate public inquiry last month that he maintained a “death squad” of gangsters to kill other criminals when he was mayor of Davao City, in the south of the country.