- The Philippines’ top two officials are beefing so hard that one threatened to assassinate the other.
- Vice President Sara Duterte said on Saturday that she’d spoken to a hitman to kill her boss and his wife.
- She said that if she were to be killed, the hitman would carry out her orders.
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte openly threatened on Saturday to assassinate the country’s president, marking the deepest fracture yet in an alliance they once formed for the 2022 election.
Duterte made the threat in reference to unspecified potential harm that could befall her, saying she’d spoken to a hitman in case anything happened to her.
“Don’t worry about my security because I’ve talked with somebody,” said Duterte, who spoke at an online press conference from a dark room in the Philippines’ House of Representatives.
Her remark came amid a 45-minute string of expletives and criticisms she directed at President Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos, accusing him and his allies of incompetence and corruption.
“I said: “If I’m killed, you’ll kill BBM, Liza Araneta, and Martin Romualdez,'” Duterte said in Tagalog. She was referring to Marcos, the First Lady, and the Speaker of the House.
“No joke, no joke,” she added in English. Duterte also said she had “given the order” to the hitman not to stop until the trio were dead.
Meanwhile, Marcos’ office said on Saturday that it would boost the president’s security.
“Any threat to the life of the President and the First Family, regardless of its origin — and especially one made so brazenly in public — is treated with the utmost seriousness,” it said in a statement.
Eduardo Año, national security advisor to the president, added that authorities considered Duterte’s threat a “matter of national security.”
In a statement on Monday, Duterte downplayed her threat, saying it had been “maliciously taken out of logical context.” She did not clarify what she meant.
But she also blasted the national security council, saying that its responsibilities related to the safety of the country, not a vice president’s remarks about a president.
A partnership doomed from the start
In the Philippines, the vice president and president are elected separately and don’t necessarily hail from the same party or ideology, though Duterte and Marcos positioned themselves as running mates.
Both rose to power as the legacies of their fathers loomed large in the Philippines. Duterte’s father, Rodrigo Duterte, was president from 2016 to 2022 and earned himself a controversial “strongman” reputation for his hardline war on drugs.
Marcos’ father, Ferdinand Marcos Sr., was a dictator who ruled the Philippines from 1965 to 1986, enacting martial law in 1972 to extend his grip on power.
The pair’s families forged an alliance in 2022, uniting Duterte’s base in the south and Marcos’ voters in the north to secure a general election victory. They had vowed at the time to unite the country.
“It was really out of convenience,” Ronald Holmes, who teaches political science at De La Salle University in Manila, told Business Insider. “There was nothing between them in the past that would’ve bound them.”
Their partnership ruptured quickly after their win, as they disagreed on diplomacy and governance, like how to deal with a rising China.
As Marcos formed his cabinet, Duterte was also assigned the Department of Education instead of the national defense portfolio she had been gunning for. She resigned from the post two years later, in June.
Lawmakers then announced an investigation into her department, after Duterte faced accusations of improperly using funds and amid reports that students were faring poorly.
More overt signs of the pair’s crumbling partnership emerged in October, when Duterte said in a press conference that she and Marcos had joined forces as running mates simply to win the election.
She said at the time that she had recently dreamt of Marcos and “wanted to cut his head off.”
Impeachment may prove difficult
But her remarks on Sunday were more than references to dreams and jokes — they were an overt threat to the security of her nation’s leader.
“This is no longer rhetoric,” Jorge Tigno, a professor of political science at the University of the Philippines Diliman, told BI. “When you threaten the president, that’s no longer a rhetorical statement. It’s even worse when, afterward, you say it’s not a joke.”
Holmes said the likeliest course of action from the central government would be an impeachment attempt against Duterte based on her remarks.
Such an endeavor may prove turbulent. The motion must pass through the Philippines’ House of Representatives and then the Senate, which is due for a change-up in the coming 2025 midterm elections.
“Conviction in the Senate at this point might be pretty difficult because you have about a third of the Senate who can be thought of as allies of the vice president,” Holmes said.
Should impeachment fail, it’s unclear what will happen within the Marcos administration. It is due to govern until the Philippines’ next election in 2028.
Tigno said that Duterte, devoid of significant leadership roles, should have little effect on Marcos’ running of the country.
However, he worries that the elite infighting will catapult national politics into further toxicity. The Philippines, with 117 million people, is Southeast Asia’s second-most populated nation, and has been one of Washington’s key allies as the US seeks to compete against China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific.
“We could end up with what they have now in the US. A polarized system, a polarized situation between the Duterte and the Marcos camp,” Tigno said.
“But it’s not a question of a ‘good vs evil’ kind of polarization. It’s more of one elite group competing for power and position against another elite group,” he added.
Spokespersons for Duterte and Marcos did not respond to requests for comment sent by Business Insider.
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