MANILA – Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte said on Saturday that she received a contract from an assassin to kill the President, his wife and the speaker of the House of Representatives if he is killed, in a public threat and warned that it was not a joke.
Secretary General Lucas Bersamin conveyed an “active threat” against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in a high-ranking presidential bodyguard “for immediate appropriate action.” At the moment it was not clear what action will be taken against the Vice President.
The Presidential Security Command immediately beefed up Marcos' security and said it considers the threat against the Vice President, “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 ally and cousin, accusing them of corruption, incompetence and political persecution of Duterte. family and their close supporters.
Read more: What You Need to Know About the Dutertes' Pursuit of Power in the Philippines
His latest anger was offset by the decision of members of the House allied with Romualdez and Marcos to imprison his chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, who is accused of obstructing a congressional investigation into the misappropriation of his budget as Vice President and Secretary of Education. 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 incompetence as President and of being a liar, along with his wife and the speaker of the House in expletive-laden 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 have spoken to someone. I said 'if I am killed, you will kill BBM, Liza Araneta and Martin Romualdez. There is no joke, there is no joke,'” said the Vice President without elaborating and using the words that many started calling the President.
“I issued my order, 'If I die, do not stop until you kill them.' And he said, 'yes,'” the Vice President said.
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, military chief General Romeo Brawner issued a statement assuring that the 160,000-member 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 sever our ties as Filipinos.”
The Vice President is the daughter of Marcos' predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, whose police-enforced anti-drug campaign when he was mayor of the city and later as President left thousands of small-time drug suspects dead in murders that have been under investigation by the International Criminal Court. as a possible offense to people.
The former President denied that he authorized the extrajudicial killings under his watch but gave conflicting 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.
Source link
