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 was killed, prompting Marcos’ office to promise “appropriate action”.
In a dramatic sign of growing tensions between the Southeast Asian nation’s two most powerful political families, Duterte told a news conference this morning that he had spoken to the assassin and ordered him to kill Marcos, his wife and the Philippines’ spokesman. Sing if he was going to be killed.
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“I talked to someone. I said, if I am killed, go kill BBM (Marcos), (first lady) Liza Araneta, and (Speaker) Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke,” Duterte said in a mock-laden briefing. “I said don’t stop until you kill them and he said yes.”
He was responding to an online commenter urging him to stay safe, saying he was in enemy territory as he was in the lower chamber of Congress at night with the chief of staff. Duterte did not express any of his threats.
The Office of the President of Communications responded by saying: “According to the Vice President’s clear and unequivocal statement that he agreed with the assassin to kill the President if the case against him succeeds, the Secretary General reported this threat to Presidential Security. Order immediate action.”
“Any threat to the President’s life should always be taken seriously, especially so that these threats are made public clearly and in other words,” he said.
Duterte’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the presidential office’s statement.
“This country will go to hell because we are being led by a person who does not know how to be the president of the country and is a liar,” he said in a nutshell.
Duterte, the daughter of her predecessor Marcos, stepped down in June as vice president, marking the collapse of a formidable political alliance that helped her and Marcos, the dictator’s son and namesake, secure their victory in the 2022 elections. limits.
Speaker Romualdez, a relative of Marcos, reduced the budget of the vice president’s office by two-thirds.
Duterte’s outburst is the latest in a series of shocking signs of conflict over Philippine politics. In October, he accused Marcos of incompetence and said he was considering beheading the president.
The two families are fighting over foreign policy and the worst war of the former president, Mr. Rodrigo Duterte, against drugs, etc.
In the Philippines, the vice president is elected separately from the president and has no official duties. Many of the country’s vice presidents have continued with the work of social development, while others have been appointed to the seats of the council of ministers.
The country is gearing up for mid-term elections in May, seen as a test of Marcos’ popularity and a chance for him to consolidate power and marry a successor before his six-year term expires in 2028.
Past political violence in the Philippines included the assassination of Benigno Aquino, a senator who strongly opposed the Marcos regime, when he stepped out of his plane on his way home from political exile in 1983.
(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by William Mallard)