The vice president of the Philippines makes a public assassination threat against the country’s president

Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte shockingly declared on Saturday that she had contracted an assassin to kill the president, his wife and other top officials should she meet an untimely death.

Duterte warned in an online press conference that she is dead serious and not kidding about her threat to have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. killed if anything happens to her first. Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin referred the “active threat” against the president to an elite presidential guard force “for immediate proper action.”

The Presidential Security Command said it has “elevated and strengthened” Marcos’ security protocols. “We are also coordinating closely with law enforcement agencies to detect, deter and defend against any and all threats against the President and the First Family.”

Security officials are treating the threat — “made so brazenly in public” — with the “utmost seriousness.”

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“We consider this a matter of national security and will take all necessary precautions to ensure the safety of the President,” the command said.

It is unclear what steps will possibly be taken against the vice president.

Marcos and Duterte ran on the same ticket in the May 2022 elections, and both were elected in landslide majorities after campaigning for national unity.

But divisions over policy toward Chinese aggression in the disputed South China Sea and other key issues interrupted the honeymoon and led to a falling out between Marcos and Duterte.

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Duterte, a populist, is the daughter of equally controversial former President Rodrigo Duterte, a well-known critic of Marcos, his wife Liza Araneta-Marcos and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, the president’s ally and cousin. Duterte has accused them of corruption, incompetence and political persecution of her family and supporters.

Her threat to have Marcos killed came after members of the House of Representatives allied with Romualdez and Marcos detained her chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, who was accused of obstructing a congressional investigation into the possible misuse of her budget as vice president and education secretary. Lopez was later transferred to a hospital after becoming ill and crying when she heard about a plan to temporarily lock her up in a women’s prison, the Associated Press reported.

Furious, Duterte held an online news conference on Saturday and accused Marcos of incompetence as president and of being a liar, along with his wife and the Speaker of the House, hurling several expletives at them in her remarks.

When asked about concerns for her safety, the 46-year-old lawyer suggested there was an unspecified plan to kill her. “Don’t worry about my safety because I talked to somebody. I said ‘if I get killed, you kill BBM, Liza Araneta and Martin Romualdez. No joke, no joke,'” the vice president said without elaborating and using the initials , which many use to call the president.

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“I gave my order: ‘If I die, don’t stop until you kill them.’ And he said ‘yes,'” the vice president said, according to the AP.

Philippine law criminalizes public remarks that may constitute the crime of threatening to cause harm to a person or his family, punishable by imprisonment and a fine.

In light of the chaotic political divisions, military chief General Romeo Brawner issued a statement pledging that the 160,000 members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines would remain non-partisan “with utmost respect for our democratic institutions and civilian authority.”

“We’re calling for calm and determination,” Brawner said. “We reiterate our need to stand together against those who would try to break our bond as Filipinos.”

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Duterte’s father, Rodrigo Duterte, presided over police-enforced anti-narcotics crackdowns when he was the city’s mayor and later president that left thousands of drug suspects dead in killings that the International Criminal Court has investigated as a possible crime against humanity.

The former president has denied authorizing extrajudicial killings during his anti-drug crusade, but some of his public statements have contradicted his denials. He told a public inquiry by the Philippine Senate last month that he had maintained a “death squad” of gangsters to kill other criminals when he was mayor of southern Davao.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.