The vice-president of the Philippines has hired a hitman to kill the country’s president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr, his wife and the speaker of the house, in the event she is assassinated.
Describing how she contracted an assassin as a kind of insurance policy for her own protection, Sara Duterte said: “I’ve given my order. ‘If I die, don’t stop until you’ve killed them.’ And he said, ‘yes’.”
She insisted the warning was not a joke.
Ms Duterte’s brazen public threat signals just how deep the rift has become between the two leaders of the island nation after their landslide election victory in 2022.
She is the daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, a firebrand politician whose anti-drugs crackdown ended in the deaths of thousands of people.
The International Criminal Court is investigating whether those actions amount to possible crimes against humanity.
Mr Marcos Jr is the son of late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled the country under martial law before being overthrown in a popular uprising in 1986.
After making a pact to win the election, the pair have had a serious falling out over disagreements in policy approaches, including how Manila should handle Chinese territorial aggression in the international waters of the South China Sea.
The Philippine presidential security command said it considered Ms Duterte’s threat a matter of national security, and immediately boosted its security for Mr Marcos Jr.
The security force said it was “co-ordinating with law enforcement agencies to detect, deter and defend against any and all threats to the president and the first family”.
Ms Duterte has also opposed Mr Marcos Jr’s wife, Liza Araneta-Marcos and house speaker Martin Romualdez, alleging corruption, incompetence and political persecution of her family and their allies.
Her assassination threat comes shortly after Zuleika Lopez, her chief of staff, was detained by Mr Marcos Jr’s allies in the house.
Ms Lopez is accused of impeding a congressional inquiry into whether she misused the budget in her prior posts as vice-president and education secretary.
The dramatic political spat has prompted Romeo Brawner, the Philippine military chief, to assure that the country’s armed forces remained non-partisan and retained “utmost respect for our democratic institutions and civilian authority”.
“We call for calm and resolve,” Mr Brawner said. “We reiterate our need to stand together against those who will try to break our bonds as Filipinos.”
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