Former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte appeared to come to the defense of his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, in the early morning hours of Tuesday with a public rant referring to President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., as a “drug addict” and suggesting the military should oust him.
The younger Duterte and Marcos are embroiled in a very public spat stemming from a Congressional investigation into the vice president’s office, which allegedly misappropriated public funds. Sara Duterte appeared on a live internet stream overnight on Saturday accusing Marcos of lying to curry favor with the public and trying to destroy her. Duterte also claimed that she had arranged with an unnamed party, which appeared to be a reference to a hitman, for Marcos, his wife, and House Speaker Martin Romualdez to be killed if she died.
Filipino law enforcement officials responded to the outrageous comments by opening a national security investigation into Sara Duterte and suggesting she could face charges of sedition.
Former President Rodrigo Duterte discussed the situation on Tuesday in a live video published on his Facebook account. He accused Marcos of creating a situation of “fractured governance” in which he and Romualdez were beyond the system of checks and balances.
“There is a fractured governance sa Pilipinas ngayon (in the Philippines right now). Nobody can correct Marcos, nobody can correct Romualdez,” Duterte said. “There is no urgent remedy … It is only the military who can correct it.”
“Until when will you support an addict president?” Duterte asked the nation’s soldiers, apparently requesting that they overthrow Marcos. “I challenge the whole military kasi (because) they’re supposed to be the protector of the constitution.”
Duterte has repeatedly accused Marcos of being a drug addict, offering no evidence for his claims. Duterte’s signature policy as president was a bloody campaign against organized drug trafficking in which he has been widely accused of extrajudicial killings and other human rights crimes.
Duterte spuriously accused Marcos of being a cocaine addict in January, to which the president replied that Duterte should regulate his consumption of fentanyl.
“It is highly addictive and it has very serious side effects. And PRRD [President Rodrigo D. Duterte] has been taking the drug for a very long time now,” Marcos said at the time. “When was the last time he told us that he was taking fentanyl? Mga (Around) five, six years ago? Something like that. After five, six years it has to affect him.”
Duterte has openly admitted to consuming fentanyl, allegedly for pain relief.
Outside of his general call to the military, Duterte claimed in his remarks that Marcos and the legislature were “in cahoots attempting to change the constitution” and suggested that Marcos, and not his daughter, was embroiled in financial improprieties, particularly funds regarding the Filipino healthcare system. He also dismissed the investigation into the vice president and “the assassination remark” as “insignificant.”
The Marcos administration sternly condemned Rodrigo Duterte on Tuesday, accusing him of an “evil” plot to install his daughter as president.
“No motive is more selfish than calling for a sitting president to be overthrown so that your daughter can take over,” Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin told reporters. “And he will go to great and evil lengths, such as insulting our professional armed forces by asking them to betray their oath, for his plan to succeed.”
“The former president should respect the Constitution, not disobey it. He should desist from being as irresponsible as he has become,” Bersamin added, according to the Philippine Star.
Duterte’s comments follow an angry online statement from Vice President Sara Duterte that has resulted in a sedition probe.
“I have talked to someone. I told him that if I am killed, he should kill [Marcos Jr.], [First Lady] Liza Araneta and [House Speaker] Martin Romualdez. No joke,” Sara Duterte told online listeners on Saturday. “If I am killed, I said, don’t stop until you have killed them, and then he said ‘yes.’”
Duterte also yelled at Marcos and accusing him of being a “liar” and a “putang ina,” a Filipino profanity roughly translating to “son of a whore.” Duterte’s father famously used the slur copiously during his presidency against international figures such as then-President Barack Obama and Pope Francis.
Marcos initially responded to Sara Duterte with a speech on Monday in which he called her comments “disturbing” and promised to “fight” threats to his family.
“There is the insolent cursing and the threat of a plan to kill some of us,” Marcos said. “Such a criminal attempt should not be ignored. If it is so easy to plan the assassination of a president, how much more so for ordinary citizens?”
Duterte later accused her own government of taking her comments “out of context.” On Tuesday, she insisted that she did not threaten to assassinate the president because she never used the word “assassin.”
“There is absolutely no flesh on the bone, and despite the absence of a reliable investigation, authorities were quick to consider this a national security concern,” she said in a statement. “Tossing the word ‘assassin’ into this issue makes things even more terrifying – and especially because I never used that term during my recent consternation against the Marcos administration’s failure to serve the Filipinos while it masterfully persecutes political enemies.”