Marcos lips sealed on VP’s remarks

“I’d rather not.”

This was President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr.’s response to a request for comment on Vice President Sara Duterte’s controversial remark about his father’s remains.

Duterte had said that she told Senator Imee Marcos, the President’s sister, that she would exhume the remains of their father, ex-President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr., at the Libingan ng mga Bayani and throw it in the West Philippine Sea if the attacks against her by the Marcos camp didn’t stop.

President Marcos refused to comment on Duterte’s tirade.

On Friday, All Saints’ Day, Marcos and his mother, former first lady Imelda R. Marcos, attended a mass at the tomb of the late Marcos Sr., where the younger Marcos expressed his gratitude to the loyalists who came.

He was escorting his mother to her car when he was further asked if his relationship with the Vice President had reached the “point of no return.”

Marcos responded: “Let’s talk about it some other time.”

The Vice President’s father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, had allowed Marcos Sr.’s remains to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes Cemetery) in Taguig City in 2016, saying he deserved it because he was a former soldier.

The elder Marcos, who died in Hawaii in 1989, remained unburied in Ilocos Norte while his family waited for an opportune time to have him interred in the heroes’ cemetery.