Dpa
Manila
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte on Saturday threatened to have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr assassinated if she herself was killed, amid a growing rift between the two most powerful political families in the country.
In an early morning press conference, Duterte said she has already spoken with someone who has agreed to kill Marcos, his wife, and the speaker of House of Representatives, who is the president’s cousin, if she was to get murdered.
"This country is going to hell because we are led by a person who doesn’t know how to be a president and who is a liar,” she said in the profanity-laden briefing broadcast on her Facebook page.
"Don’t worry about my safety. I have talked to a person and I said, if I get killed, go kill BBM [Marcos], [First Lady] Liza Araneta, and [Speaker] Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke,” she added. "I said, do not stop until you kill them and he said yes.”
Duterte made the statement in response to comments urging her to stay safe while she was at the House of Representatives, where her chief of staff was detained for failing to reply to questions during a hearing on alleged misuse of funds at the vice presidential office.
The Presidential Communications Office said Duterte’s statement was being taken as a serious threat against Marcos.
"Acting on the vice president’s clear and unequivocal statement that she had contracted an assassin to kill the president if an alleged plot against her succeeds, the executive secretary has referred this active threat to the Presidential Security Command for immediate proper action,” it said.
"Any threat to the life of the president must always be taken seriously, more so that this threat has been publicly revealed in clear and certain terms,” the office added in a statement.
Duterte is the daughter of Marcos’ predecessor, who is notorious for his crude language and a controversial war on drugs that left thousands dead during his six-year term from 2016.
She resigned from her post as education secretary in Marcos’ Cabinet in June, indicating a crack in their political alliance that propelled them to victory with wide margins in 2022.
In October, Vice President Duterte told reporters that her relationship with Marcos has become "toxic” that sometimes she imagines beheading the president.
"I imagine myself cutting [off] his head,” she said. "That’s the time I realized it has become toxic, that’s how I’m imagining things, that I’m strangling him.”
The two families are at odds over foreign policy and former President Rodrigo Duterte’s deadly war on drugs, among others.
In the Philippines, the vice president is elected separately from the president and has no official duties. Many vice presidents have pursued social development activities, while some have been appointed to cabinet posts.
The political rift happened ahead of mid-term elections in May, when Filipinos are to vote for new members of the House of Representatives, half of the Senate and thousands of local officials.
It will be a litmus test of Marcos’ popularity and an opportunity for him and his political allies to consolidate power.