Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte said on Saturday she would have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. assassinated if she herself were killed, prompting Marcos\u2019 office to vow \u201cimmediate proper action.\u201d <\/p>\n
In a dramatic sign of a widening rift between the two most powerful political families in the Southeast Asian nation, Duterte told an early morning press conference that she had spoken to an assassin and instructed him to kill Marcos, his wife and the speaker of the Philippine House if she were to be killed. <\/p>\n
\u201cI 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,\u201d Duterte said in the profanity-laden briefing. \u201cI said, do not stop until you kill them and then he said yes.\u201d <\/p>\n
She was responding to an online commenter urging her to stay safe, saying she was in enemy territory as she was at the lower chamber of Congress overnight with her chief of staff. Duterte did not cite any alleged threat against herself. <\/p>\n
The Presidential Communications Office responded with a statement saying: \u201cActing on the Vice President\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cAny 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,\u201d it said. <\/p>\n
Duterte\u2019s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the presidential office\u2019s statement. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis country is going to hell because we are led by a person who doesn\u2019t know how to be a president and who is a liar,\u201d she said in the briefing. <\/p>\n
Duterte, the daughter of Marcos\u2019 predecessor, resigned from the cabinet in June while remaining vice president, signaling the collapse of a formidable political alliance that helped her and Marcos, son and namesake of the late authoritarian leader, secure their 2022 electoral victories by wide margins. <\/p>\n
Speaker Romualdez, a cousin of Marcos, has slashed the vice presidential office\u2019s budget by nearly two-thirds. <\/p>\n
Duterte\u2019s 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 the president\u2019s head off. <\/p>\n
The two families are at odds over foreign policy and former President Rodrigo Duterte\u2019s deadly war on drugs, among others. <\/p>\n
In the Philippines, the vice president is elected separately from the president and has no official duties. Many vice presidents have pursued social development activities, while some have been appointed to cabinet posts. <\/p>\n
The nation is gearing up for mid-term elections in May, seen as a litmus test of Marcos\u2019 popularity and a chance for him to consolidate power and groom a successor before his single six-year term ends in 2028. <\/p>\n
Past political violence in the Philippines has included the assassination of Benigno Aquino, a senator who staunchly opposed the rule the elder Marcos, as he exited his plane upon arrival home from political exile in 1983. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte said on Saturday she would have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10514,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}