The vice president of the Philippines publicly threatens to kill the president, his family

Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte said on Saturday that she has a contract with an assassin to kill the president, his wife and the Speaker of the House of Representatives if he is killed, publicly threatening to warn that it was not a joke.

Lucas Bersamin, the secretary general of the state, conveyed an “effective threat” against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to the presidential guard “for immediate appropriate action.” At the moment it was not clear what steps will be taken against the vice president.

The Presidential Security Command immediately beefed up Marcos’ security and said it considers the vice president’s threat, “made out of public disdain,” a national security issue.

The security forces said they are “cooperating with law enforcement agencies to detect, prevent and protect against any threats against the president and the first family.”

Marcos ran with Duterte as his vice presidential running mate in the May 2022 elections, and both won in landslides in the call for national unity campaign.

The two leaders and their camps, however, have been at odds over key differences, including their approach to China’s aggressive actions in the disputed South China Sea. Duterte resigned from the Marcos cabinet in June as education secretary and head of the anti-terrorism unit.

Like his outspoken father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, the vice president has been a vocal critic of Marcos, his wife, Liza Araneta-Marcos, and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, the president’s running mate and cousin, accusing them of corruption, incompetence and politicking. prosecuting the Duterte family and their close supporters.

Duterte’s recent anger was offset by the decision of members of the House allied with Romualdez and Marcos to imprison his chief, Zuleika Lopez, who is accused of obstructing the congressional investigation into the misappropriation of his budget as vice president and education secretary. Lopez was later transferred to the hospital after becoming ill and cried when she heard about the plan to incarcerate her in a women’s prison.

In a pre-dawn online news conference, an angry Sara Duterte accused Marcos of presidential incompetence and being a liar, along with his wife and the Speaker of the House, in profanity-laced remarks.

When asked about his security concerns, the 46-year-old lawyer suggested there was an unspoken plot to kill him. “Don’t worry about my security because I talked to someone. I said ‘if I am killed, he will kill BBM, Liza Araneta and Martin Romualdez. No jokes, no jokes,'” said the vice president. without elaborating and referring to the initials used by many to call the president.

“I gave my order, if I die, don’t stop until you kill them. And he said, ‘yes,'” said the vice president.

Under the Philippine penal code, such public comments may constitute a crime of threatening a person or his family and may be punishable by imprisonment and fines.

Amid the political divide, the army chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr. issued a statement assuring that the 160,000 Armed Forces of the Philippines will remain neutral “with utmost respect for our democratic institutions and the authority of the people.”

“We’re asking for calm and determination,” Brawner said. “We emphasize our need to stand together against those who would try to break our responsibilities as Filipinos.”

The vice president is the daughter of Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, who led the police to fight drugs when he was mayor of the city and later when he was president, he left thousands of small-time drug suspects dead in murders that were investigated by the International Criminal Court. as a possible offense to people.

The former president has denied that he authorized the unlawful killing of people under his authority but has issued contradictory statements. He told a Philippine Senate inquiry last month that he had maintained an “assassination squad” of gangsters to kill other criminals when he was mayor of the southern city of Davao.