Philippines’s Marcos vows to fight ‘troubling’ threat of VP Sara Duterte

President says in a recorded national address that ‘criminal plans’ against him and first lady should not be overlooked.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has said he would fight back against what he described as a “troubling” threat against him, just days after his estranged ally Sara Duterte said she had asked someone to assassinate the president if she was killed.

In a strongly-worded video message addressing the nation on Monday, Marcos said, “Such criminal plans should not be overlooked.” He, however, did not name Vice President Duterte, his presidential running mate in 2022.

In a dramatic twist in the fierce spat between Marcos and the powerful Duterte family, the daughter of firebrand former President Rodrigo Duterte on Saturday said she had instructed an assassin to kill Marcos, his wife and the parliament speaker if she was killed.

She was responding to a question during an online news conference about whether she feared for her safety. She did not cite any specific threat against her.

“The statements we heard in the previous days were troubling,” Marcos said. “There is the reckless use of profanities and threats to kill some of us.”

“I will fight them,” he said, adding he would not allow such criminal attempts to pass.

“If planning the assassination of the president is that easy, how much more for ordinary citizens?”

Duterte told reporters she had yet to hear the president’s statement but would respond later.

Earlier on Monday, Duterte said her statement against Marcos was “maliciously taken out of logical context”.

Collapse of alliance between two powerful families

In an open letter, she also questioned the pronouncement of the National Security Council (NSC) that it considers all threats thrown at Marcos “serious and a matter of national security”.

The vice president’s stunning remarks were the latest salvo in a bitter row that has intensified since the collapse of a formidable alliance between their two powerful families that saw Marcos, the son and namesake of the late leader, win the 2022 election by a huge margin.

She quit her cabinet post in June and has battled against congressional scrutiny of her spending while in office, at times responding with open hostility to lawmakers and failing to show up for some proceedings.

In October, Duterte had told reporters that her relationship with Marcos had become so “toxic” that she sometimes imagines beheading him.

The threat to have Marcos killed stemmed from an order by lawmakers to transfer her top aide to jail for allegedly impeding its inquiry into alleged misuse of funds by the vice president’s office.

According to a senior Department of Justice official, the vice president does not have immunity from prosecution.

Sara Duterte’s attack on Marcos also comes just weeks after the mercurial Rodrigo Duterte was the subject of a marathon congressional inquiry into thousands of killings during the so-called “war on drugs” that defined his presidency from 2016 to 2022.

During those hearings, the Marcos administration for the first time signalled it would cooperate with any international effort to arrest the former president, who is being investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for possible crimes against humanity.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr (third from right) and Vice President Sara Duterte (third from left) ran as a political tandem in 2022 and won the election in a landslide [File: Rolex dela Pena/EPA]