VP of Philippines says she’s hired assassin to kill president and his wife if needed

Security stepped up for President ‘Bongbong’ Marcos after ex-ally Sara Duterte tells reporters she contracted assassin to carry out hit in case she is killed: ‘No joke, no joke’

The Philippines' then-Vice President-elect, Sara Duterte, daughter of the outgoing populist president, speaks during her oath-taking rites in her hometown, Davao City, in the southern Philippines, June 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Manman Dejeto)
The Philippines' then-Vice President-elect, Sara Duterte, daughter of the outgoing populist president, speaks during her oath-taking rites in her hometown, Davao City, in the southern Philippines, June 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Manman Dejeto)

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte said Saturday she has contracted an assassin to kill the president, his wife and the speaker of the Philippines’ House of Representatives if she herself is killed, in a brazen public threat that she warned was not a joke.

Lucas Bersamin, Manila’s Executive Secretary, referred the “active threat” against Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to an elite presidential guards force “for immediate proper action.” It was not immediately clear what actions would be taken against Vice President Duterte.

The Presidential Security Command immediately boosted Marcos’s security and said it considered Duterte’s threat, which was “made so brazenly in public,” a national security issue.

The security force said it was “coordinating with law enforcement agencies to detect, deter, and defend against any and all threats to the president and the first family.”

Marcos ran with Duterte as his vice-presidential running mate in the May 2022 elections and both won with landslide victories on a campaign call of national unity.

The two leaders and their camps, however, rapidly had a bitter falling-out over key differences, including in their approaches 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 an anti-insurgency body.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. arrives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2023. (AP/Markus Schreiber)

Like her equally outspoken father, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Sara Deuterte has become a vocal critic of Marcos, his wife Liza Araneta-Marcos and Manila’s House Speaker Martin Romualdez — an ally and cousin of the president — accusing them of corruption, incompetence and politically persecuting the Duterte family and its close supporters.

Her latest tirade was set off by the decision by House members allied with Romualdez and Marcos to detain her chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, who was accused of hampering a congressional inquiry into the possible misuse of her budget as vice president and education secretary. Lopez was later transferred to a hospital after falling ill and wept when she heard of a plan to temporarily lock her up in a women’s prison.

In expletives-laden remarks delivered at a pre-dawn, online news conference, an angry Sara Duterte accused Marcos of incompetence as a president and of being a liar, along with his wife and the House speaker.

When asked about concerns over her security, the 46-year-old lawyer suggested there was an unspecified plot to kill her.

The Philippines’ then-President Rodrigo Roa Duterte (C) waves upon his arrival in Jerusalem at the start of an official visit to Israel, on September 2, 2018. (Menahem Kahana/AFP)

“Don’t worry about my security because I’ve talked with somebody. I said: ‘If I’m killed, you’ll kill BBM, Liza Araneta and Martin Romualdez,” she said, using the initials that many use to call the president. ”

‘No joke, no joke,’” she added, without elaborating.

“I’ve given my order, ‘If I die, don’t stop until you’ve killed them.’ And he said, ’yes,’” the vice president said.

Under the Philippine penal code, such public remarks may constitute a crime of threatening to inflict a wrong on a person or his family and is punishable by a jail term and fine.

Amid the political divisions, Philippine military chief Gen. Romeo Brawner issued a statement with an assurance that the 160,000-member Armed Forces of the Philippines would remain nonpartisan “with utmost respect for our democratic institutions and civilian authority.”

“We call for calm and resolve,” Brawner said. “We reiterate our need to stand together against those who will try to break our bonds as Filipinos.”

Philippine military chief Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., gestures during a press conference with US Indo-Pacific Command Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo (not in picture), on the Mutual Defense Board-Security Engagement Board, at the Philippine Military Academy in the northern Philippine town of Baguio, August 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Both the president and vice president of the Philippines hail from political dynasties.

“Bongbong” Marcos is the son of the Philippines’ late authoritarian president Ferdinand Marcos, who, along with his wife and the current president’s mother Imelda Marcos, oversaw a 20-year-long kleptocracy that was overthrown in the non-violent People Power Revolution of 1986.

Vice President Duterte is the daughter of “Bongbong’s” predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, whose police-enforced anti-drugs crackdown when he was a city mayor and later as president left thousands of mostly petty drug suspects dead in killings that the International Criminal Court has been investigating as a possible crime against humanity.

The elder Duterte denied authorizing extrajudicial killings under his crackdown but has given conflicting statements. He told a public Philippine Senate inquiry last month that he had maintained a “death squad” of gangsters to kill other criminals when he was mayor of southern Davao City.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

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