MANILA, Philippines – The President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos Jr On Monday, he vowed to fight back against what he called reckless and disturbing threats against him, speaking afterwards. The alien vice president said he would be killed. If she herself had been killed.
In a strongly worded video message to the nation, Marcos did not name Vice President Sara Duterte, who is in his presidential race, but said “criminal plans like this should not be ignored.” “
A dramatic twist in the fierce feud between the Marcoses and the powerful Duterte family, the firebrand former president’s daughter Rodrigo Duterte said on Saturday that he had instructed an assassin to kill Marcos, his wife and the speaker of the lower house in the event of an assassination.
She was responding to a question during an online news conference about whether she feared for her safety. He did not cite any specific threat against him.
“The statements we heard in the past days are disturbing,” Marcos said on Monday. “There is a reckless use of insults and threats to kill some of us.”
“I will fight them,” he said, adding that he would not allow such criminal attempts to pass.
“If it is so easy to plan the assassination of the president, how much more for ordinary citizens?” he said.
Sara Duterte told reporters that she had not yet heard the president’s statement but recalled the 1983 assassination of former senator Benigno Aquino, for which she blamed the Marcos family without evidence.
Aquino, a staunch critic of the late Ferdinand Marcos, father of the current president, was gunned down at the Manila airport upon his return from years in exile. His assassination helped spark the 1986 People Power Revolution that ousted the elder Marcos.
“When his family killed Benigno Aquino Jr., the whole nation struck back,” Duterte told reporters. The elder Marcos denied involvement in Aquino’s murder.
Sara Duterte’s surprise comments were the latest salvo in a bitter conflict that has intensified since the collapse of a strong alliance between her two powerful families in which the younger Marcos Won the 2022 election. by a large margin.
She left her cabinet post in June and has faced legislative scrutiny of her spending while in office, sometimes responding with open hostility to lawmakers and failing to show up for some proceedings.
His threat to kill Marcos stemmed from lawmakers ordering him to jail his chief of staff for obstructing an investigation into the vice president’s alleged misuse of public funds, charges he denies. are
According to a senior Justice Department official, the vice president does not have immunity from prosecution and will be subpoenaed to appear before the National Bureau of Investigation over the threats. Duterte said she would comply.
“It’s a serious threat, a very, very bad precedent for our country if we don’t prosecute this type of threat from a high-ranking official,” Justice Undersecretary Jesse Hermogenes Andres said at a news conference. Will do.”
“The premeditated plot to assassinate the President as announced by the self-confessed mastermind will now face legal consequences,” Andres said, adding that if Marcos was harmed, Duterte would There will obviously be an advantage as he is next in line to take over the presidency.
Echoing the president’s concerns, House Speaker Martin Romualdez said Duterte’s statement was “reckless” and “dangerous.”
“It sends a chilling message to our people, a message that those in positions of power can contemplate violence,” Marcos’ cousin Romualdez said in a speech to a plenary session.
In a statement Monday, the National Security Council reiterated that the president’s security is a “neutral or apolitical concern.”
Marcos said it was important in the interests of good governance that elected officials not obstruct the work of lawmakers, adding: “If the legitimate questions of Congress had been answered, we would not have reached this drama.”
Sara Duterte’s attack on Marcos came just weeks after she was the subject of a marathon inquiry in the House and Senate into the thousands of deaths during the notorious “war on drugs” that defined her 2016-2022 presidency.
During these hearings, the Marcos administration first hinted that this would happen. Cooperate with any international effort to arrest the former president.who is under investigation by the International Criminal Court for possible crimes against humanity.
Rodrigo Duterte told the hearings that he was solely responsible for the bloody crackdown and urged the ICC to “expedite” its investigation.