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Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte made more controversial remarks about President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. after a committee hearing at the House of Representatives revealed more details on the alleged misuse of funds by her office.
Duterte, who refused to attend the probe, rushed to the Congress complex to support her aide who was cited for contempt by legislators for “undue interference.” She then held a press briefing describing the congressional investigation as political harassment against her family. When an order was made to transfer the aide to a jail facility, Duterte went live on social media to lambast House officials, the First Lady, and President Marcos.
She claimed that the First Couple illegally used campaign funds and that she was framed in distributing the money she received from the presidential palace. She accused the House Speaker, the president’s first cousin, of plotting the House probe to prevent the Dutertes from running in the 2028 presidential race. She ridiculed Marcos’s leadership and attributed the country’s problems to his incompetence. More alarmingly, she warned that if she were to be killed, she had hired assassins to kill her political enemies, including the First Couple and the House speaker.
This is not the first time that Duterte has made extreme remarks against the Marcos administration since resigning from her Cabinet post in June. When a House committee hearing first revealed her office’s irregular use of funds, Duterte threatened to exhume the remains of Marcos’ father.
Former Senator Leila de Lima thinks that Duterte was aiming to distract attention by making ridiculous and sensational statements. “This is political drama staged by the office of the vice president to divert the issue from its plunder of confidential funds,” she said in a post on X.
Regardless of Duterte’s motive, the presidential security command is treating the vice president’s statement as an active threat and has reinforced the protection of the First Family. “Any threat to the life of the President and the First Family, regardless of its origin – and especially one made so brazenly in public – is treated with the utmost seriousness,” it said in a statement.
Partido Federal ng Pilipinas, the president’s party, said that Duterte’s public rant was “deeply alarming as it undermines the rule of law and fosters a culture of lawlessness and impunity.”
Senate President Chiz Escudero urged Duterte to reflect on the words she uttered since they are “inappropriate for an official occupying the second highest office of the land.”
He added: “I urge those who are close to her – those who truly care about her as a person and as a leader – to advise her to refrain from making these indecorous and possibly criminal statements in public.”
But Duterte’s supporters in the Senate insisted that it is the House leadership that should stop the “harassment” and “persecution” so that the country can move forward. They also clarified that Duterte was not serious in making the death threat and that she was simply venting her anger.
Duterte’s latest clash with Marcos and his allies could revive calls for her impeachment, in addition to emboldening her critics to be more active in pushing for accountability. Indeed, her office has many issues to explain, such as anomalous receipts, undocumented activities, irregular expenses, and unexplained reports that involved hundreds of millions of pesos in 2022 and 2023. Instead of properly addressing legitimate queries about how she managed public funds, she has ignored the hearings and accused members of Congress of conspiring against her family.
In an editorial, the Philippine Star newspaper gave this piece of advice to legislators. “The abuses being unearthed in the congressional inquiry into the utilization of confidential and intelligence funds should lead to legislation and tighter rules in giving civilian agencies supervision with little accountability over massive amounts of people’s money,” it said. The editorial added that “authorities must also ensure that the congressional probe will lead to criminal indictments.”
But if Congress really wanted to gain more credibility, it should expand its probe by reviewing the confidential funds of the office of the president or realigning a portion of the fund item to key social services. Congress should also scrutinize the pork barrel funds embedded in the national budget. This is the most effective way to discredit Duterte the next time she makes another “hyperbolic” statement about her relations with the Marcoses and the country’s state of affairs.