Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte had on Saturday, said she would have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr assassinated if she herself got killed. This outburst prompted Marcos’ office to promise “immediate proper action”.
In a dramatic sign of a growing rift between the two most powerful political families in the Southeast Asian nation, Duterte told an early morning press conference that she had talked to an assassin and instructed him to kill Marcos, his wife and the speaker of the Philippine House if she were to be killed.
In her words;
“I have talked to a person. I said, if I get killed, go kill BBM (Marcos), (first lady) Liza Araneta, and (Speaker) Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke,” Duterte said in the profanity-laden briefing. “I said, do not stop until you kill them and then he said yes.”
Duterte had made this threat in response to an online commenter urging her to stay safe, adding that she was in enemy territory as she was at the lower chamber of Congress overnight with her chief of staff. The VP had however, not cited any alleged threat against herself.
In reaction, the Presidential Communications Office responded with a statement saying: “Acting on the Vice President’s clear and unequivocal statement that she had contracted an assassin to kill the President if an alleged plot against her succeeds, the Executive Secretary has referred this active threat to the Presidential Security Command for immediate proper action.”
“Any threat to the life of the President must always be taken seriously, more so that this threat has been publicly revealed in clear and certain terms,” it said.
Duterte is the daughter of Marcos’ predecessor who resigned from the cabinet in June while remaining vice president, signalling the collapse of a formidable political alliance that helped her and Marcos, son and namesake of the late authoritarian leader, win their 2022 electoral victories with wide margins.
Duterte’s outburst is the latest in a series of shocking signs of the feud at the top of Philippine politics. Previously in October, she accused Marcos of ineptitude and said she had imagined cutting the president’s head off.
The two families are currently at odds over foreign policy and former President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly war on drugs, among others.
