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President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Monday described her threat as
a criminal plot and vowed to fight it and uphold the rule of law
in the country in a looming showdown between the country’s two
top leaders.
The national police and the military expressed alarm and
immediately boosted Marcos’s security. National Security Adviser
Eduardo Ano said the threats were a national security concern.
Duterte, a 46-year-old lawyer, said her remarks were not an
actual threat but an expression of concern over her own safety
due to unspecified danger to her life. The Marcos
administration’s statements against her were “a farce” and part
of efforts to persecute critics like her, Duterte said.
The subpoena ordered Duterte to appear before the National
Bureau of Investigation on Friday to “shed light on the
investigation for alleged grave threats.”
Duterte said Monday she was willing to face an investigation but
demanded the Marcos administration also respond to her
questions, including alleged irregularities in government.
Under Philippine law, such public remarks may constitute a crime
of threatening to inflict a wrong on a person or their family
and are punishable by a prison term and fine.
Marcos ran with Duterte as his vice-presidential running mate in
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 and became one of
the most vocal critics of the president, his wife and his cousin
Martin Romualdez, who heads the House of Representatives.
The House has been investigating alleged misuse of confidential
government funds by Duterte as vice president and when she
headed the Department of Education.
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