Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte speaks to the media at the House of Representatives, in Quezon City, the Philippines, on November 25, 2024 [Eloisa Lopez/Reuters]
AL JAZEERA | Published November 26, 2024
Philippines Vice President Sara Duterte has insisted that she has not schemed to kill the president, as investigators summoned her to testify.
Duterte told reporters on Tuesday that her instruction to have her estranged ally President Ferdinand Marcos Jr killed was a “plan without flesh”. The statement came shortly after investigators said they had summoned the official to appear before them.
Duterte told a briefing at the weekend that she had ordered someone to kill Marcos, along with his wife and cousin – the parliament speaker – if any potential plot to assassinate her should be successful.
Duterte sought to emphasise to reporters that the main condition of her plan was that she be killed first.
“My question now to the administration: Is revenge from the grave a crime?” she asked, saying that she only made the comments out of “consternation” with the president.
The daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte criticised the Marcos administration’s “failure to serve the Filipinos while it masterfully persecutes political enemies”.
“Common sense should be enough for us to understand and accept that a supposed conditional act of revenge does not constitute an active threat. This is a plan without flesh,” Duterte said.
The country’s justice department on Monday called the vice president the “self-confessed mastermind” of a plot to assassinate the president and issued a subpoena demanding her appearance at a formal inquiry.
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SOURCE: www.aljazeera.com
RELATED: Philippine showdown: President says he’ll fight vice president’s plot to have him killed
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte talks to reporters at the House of Representatives in Quezon City, Philippines November 25, 2024.
VOICE OF AMERICA | Published November 25, 2024
MANILA, PHILIPPINES —
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Monday described a public threat by the vice president to have him killed by an assassin as a criminal plot and vowed to fight it, in a looming showdown between the country’s two top leaders.
Vice President Sara Duterte said Saturday in an online news conference that she has contracted an assassin to kill the president, his wife and the speaker of the House of Representatives if she herself is killed, in a threat she warned was not a joke.
The national police and military immediately boosted the security of the president, and the justice department said it would summon the vice president for an investigation. The National Security Council said it considered the threat a national security concern.
The vice president, a lawyer, later tried to walk back her remarks by saying it was not an actual threat but an expression of concern about her own safety over an unspecified threat.
“Why would I kill him if not for revenge from the grave? There is no reason for me to kill him. What’s the benefit for me?” Duterte told journalists.
“That criminal plot should not be allowed to pass,” Marcos said in a televised statement, without mentioning Duterte by name. “I’ll fight it.”
“As a democratic country, we need to uphold the rule of law,” Marcos said.
Marcos ran with Duterte as his vice-presidential running mate in May 2022 elections and both won landslide victories on a campaign call of national unity. In the Philippines, the two positions are elected separately.
The two leaders and their camps, however, soon had a bitter falling out over key differences, including in their approaches to China’s aggressive territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea. Duterte resigned from the Marcos Cabinet in June as education secretary and head of an anti-insurgency body.
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SOURCE: www.voa.com
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