Philippine Prez says he will fight VP’s plan to have him killed

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MANILA, Philippines – Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. described one on Monday public threats from the vice president to have an assassin kill him as a criminal plot and vowed to fight it, in a looming confrontation between the country’s two top leaders.

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Vice President Sara Duterte said at an online news conference on Saturday that she has contracted a hitman to kill the president, his wife and the Speaker of the House of Representatives if she herself is killed, in a threat she warned was not a joke.

The national police and military immediately increased the president’s security, and the Justice Ministry said it would summon the vice president for an investigation. The National Security Council said it considers the threat a national security concern.

The vice president, a lawyer, later tried to rebut her comments, saying it was not an actual threat but an expression of concern for her own safety due to an unspecified threat.

“Why would I kill him if it wasn’t for revenge from the grave? There’s no reason for me to kill him. What is the benefit for me?” Duterte told reporters.

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“That criminal plot must not continue,” Marcos said in a televised statement, without mentioning Duterte by name. “I will fight it.”

“As a democratic country, we must uphold the rule of law,” Marcos said.

Marcos served as his vice presidential running mate with Duterte in the May 2022 elections and both won landslide victories on a campaign call of national unity. In the Philippines, the two positions are chosen separately.

However, the two leaders and their camps soon engaged in a bitter feud over key differences, including over their approach to China’s aggressive territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea. Duterte resigned from the Marcos cabinet in June as education minister and head of a counter-insurgency body.

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On Monday, Justice Secretary Jesse Andres said at a news conference that Duterte would be subpoenaed for an investigation.

Andres called the vice president the “self-proclaimed mastermind” of a “premeditated plot to assassinate the president.” All government resources and law enforcement agencies would be mobilized to identify the alleged killer and establish criminal liability, he said.

“We must maintain order in a civilized society by adhering to the rule of law and we will apply the full force and force of the law to this end,” Andres said.

Under Philippine law, such public comments may constitute a crime of threatening to harm an individual or his family, punishable by imprisonment and a fine.

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The Philippine Constitution states that if a president dies, develops a permanent disability, is removed from office or resigns, the vice president takes over and serves the remainder of the term.

The vice president is the daughter of Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, whose police-enforced anti-drug crackdown when he was mayor and later president killed thousands of mostly minor drug suspects in killings investigated by the International Criminal Court. a possible crime against humanity.

Like her equally outspoken father, the vice president became an outspoken critic of Marcos, his wife Liza Araneta-Marcos and House of Representatives Speaker Martin Romualdez, the president’s cousin. She accused them of corruption, incompetence and political persecution of the Duterte family and its supporters.

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Last month, the vice president told reporters that her relationship with Marcos had “become so toxic” that she had imagined “cutting off his head.”

Her latest tirade was sparked by the decision by House of Representatives members linked to Romualdez and Marcos to detain Duterte’s chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, who was accused of obstructing a congressional investigation into the possible misuse of Duterte’s budget as Vice President and Minister of Education. Lopez has been held in a hospital after being traumatized by a plan by lawmakers to temporarily jail her.

At an online pre-dawn press conference, an angry Duterte accused Marcos of being incompetent as president and a liar, along with his wife and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, in expletive-laden remarks.

When concerns were raised about her safety, Duterte, 46, suggested there was an unspecified plot to kill her. ‘Don’t worry about my safety because I’ve spoken to someone. I said, ‘If I get killed, you kill BBM, Liza Araneta and Martin Romualdez. No joke, no joke,” the vice president said, without elaborating and using the initials many use to refer to the president.

“I have given my order: ‘If I die, do not stop until you have killed them.’ And he said, yes, the vice president said.

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