Where a rumble versus political adversaries is concerned, there is nothing urbane nor sophisticated about the political Dutertes of Davao City.
Once power mates and now disunited in an ugly rift, the ties that had bound the two most politically powerful individuals in the country are rent asunder because of unmet expectations by Vice President Sara Duterte and the ill-treatment she perceives she has been given by allies of the President, including the probe into her offices’ alleged misuse of public funds by lawmakers in the House of Representatives where the President’s cousin, Martin Romualdez, sits as Speaker.
In October, triggered by a remark made by the President that he had been made to think they were friends, a furious Sara Duterte hurled insults at Marcos, capping her rant with a threat to dig up the late President Marcos Sr.’s remains at the Libingan ng mga Bayani and throwing it in the West Philippine Sea.
Earlier, she also spoke of a desire to decapitate the President when she saw him being taken aback by a graduating PMA cadet who had unceremoniously asked him for his watch.
Her most recent tirade, provoked by the detention of her chief of staff Zuleika Lopez for contempt by the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability probing the OVP and the Department of Education’s alleged misuse of funds, was even more shocking.
Enraged by the House move, particularly after lawmakers attempted to have Lopez transferred from House detention to the Women’s Correctional facility in Mandaluyong, Duterte cursed the President, First Lady Liza A. Marcos, and House Speaker Martin Romualdez over Zoom and said, in no uncertain terms, that she had contracted an assassin to rub out the three if she were killed.
“No joke, no joke,” she stressed, adding that she had told the assassin, “Do not stop until you kill them.”
“And he said yes,” according to the Vice President.
What if she slips and hits her head on the pavement? Or is run over by a jeepney?
Her seemingly unhinged behavior is reminiscent of the threats spewed by her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte against his adversaries. He may have been foul-mouthed, but nothing that he said at his most uncouth could equal his daughter’s verbalized threat against the life of a sitting president, and his blood kin.
Political observers say that at this point the President could no longer “play nice,” because the Vice President seems to be overly consumed with hatred for him and members of his family.
Not a few believe the President should now think about preserving not only his political power but his family as well.
“If the Dutertes survive beyond the midterm elections, they will be going for the jugular,” said one political observer. “Knowing them, if the Dutertes succeed in seeing their allies set in elective posts after the midterm poll, there will be hell to pay; they will take revenge.”
That’s why, said the political analyst who requested anonymity so he could speak freely, “the President is now thinking about those around him, primarily the First Lady, his sons, and of course his cousin, the House Speaker. They have to go for the jugular because their survival is at stake here, the survival of their children. The First Lady said her piece openly about the Vice President last year; the Speaker has already spoken.”
And so has the President. On Monday he said he will not stand idly by in the face of the Vice President’s threat to kill him and his wife. That statement was his first since Sara said she had contracted an assassin’s services to decimate the presidential couple and Speaker Romualdez if she were killed.
No one should underestimate such a criminal plan, said the President who underscored, “I will fight back.”
For his part, the Speaker said the Vice President’s kill threat isn’t just reckless but “dangerous; it sends a chilling message, it cannot be dismissed as a joke; it is a direct warning to our democracy, our peace, and the security of our country.”
Meanwhile, the Vice President, in reaction to a statement issued by the National Security Council that her threat against the President’s life was a matter of national security, asked for a copy of the notice of the meeting, photos, and the list of attendees, the notarized minutes where the council had resolved to consider her remarks against the President “maliciously taken out of logical context, as a national security concern.”
She demanded to know why she wasn’t invited to the meeting when as VP, she is a member of the NSC.
That the VP, the subject of a national security concern for openly revealing contracting an assassin to kill the President and his blood kin, would still expect to be invited to a meeting of the council is plain and simple incredulous.