By Neil Jerome Morales
MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte said on Saturday she would have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. assassinated if she herself were killed. This prompted Marcos' office to promise “immediate appropriate action.”
In a dramatic sign of a widening rift between the Southeast Asian country's two most powerful political families, Duterte told an early morning news conference that she had spoken to an assassin and ordered him to kill Marcos, his wife and the chairman of to assassinate the Philippine government. House if she were killed.
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“I talked to someone. I said, if I get killed, go and kill BBM (Marcos), (first lady) Liza Araneta and (speaker) Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke,” Duterte said in the profanity-laden briefing. “I said don't stop until you kill them, and then he said yes.”
She responded to an online commenter who urged her to stay safe, saying she was in enemy territory while in the House of Congress overnight with her chief of staff. Duterte did not mention any alleged threats against himself.
The Presidential Communications Office responded with a statement saying: “Following the Vice President's clear and unequivocal statement that she had contracted an assassin to kill the President if an alleged plot against her were successful, the Executive Secretary has active threat referred to the Presidential Security Service. Command for immediate appropriate action.
“Any threat to the President's life must always be taken seriously, especially when the threat has been publicly exposed in clear and specific terms,” the report said.
Duterte's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the presidential office's statement.
“This country is going to hell because we are led by someone who doesn't know how to be president and who is a liar,” she said during the briefing.
Duterte, the daughter of Marcos' predecessor, resigned from the Cabinet in June while remaining vice president, marking the collapse of a formidable political alliance that helped her and Marcos, the late authoritarian leader's son and namesake, to their election victories can be amply secured by 2022. margins.
Speaker Romualdez, a cousin of Marcos, has cut the budget of the vice presidential office by almost two-thirds.
Duterte's outburst is the latest in a series of startling signs of the feud at the top of Philippine politics. In October, she accused Marcos of incompetence and said she had imagined cutting off the president's head.
The two families disagree on issues including foreign policy and former President Rodrigo Duterte's deadly war on drugs.
In the Philippines, the vice president is elected separately from the president and has no official duties. Many vice presidents have undertaken social development activities, while some have been appointed to cabinet posts.
The country is gearing up for midterm elections in May, seen as a litmus test for Marcos' popularity and a chance for him to consolidate power and find a successor before his only six-year term expires in 2028.
Past political violence in the Philippines has included the assassination of Benigno Aquino, a senator who staunchly opposed the elder Marcos' rule, as he left his plane upon returning home from political exile in 1983.
(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by William Mallard)
