Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte yesterday failed to show up for a meeting with government investigators after being labeled the “self-confessed mastermind” of a plot to kill Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
Duterte was subpoenaed on Monday following a weekend news conference where she claimed to have told someone to kill the president should an alleged threat against her own life be carried out — comments she later said were misinterpreted — but the deadline to appear came and went yesterday, with her lawyers saying she was busy attending “office matters requiring her urgent attention.”
Philippine National Bureau of Investigation Director Jaime Santiago told reporters that Duterte’s meeting with investigators had been pushed back to Dec. 11, adding the vice president was “not immune from prosecution.”
Photo: AFP
Formal criminal charges against the vice president could mean potential jail time.
The alliance between Duterte and Marcos has collapsed spectacularly in the buildup to next year’s mid-term elections, with both sides trading allegations of drug addiction.
The vice president on Wednesday said the probe into her alleged threat and an ongoing House of Representatives investigation into her finances were aimed at removing her from office.
House officials have denied they are planning to impeach her, and Marcos yesterday said that he considered such an attempt pointless.
“This is not important. This does not make any difference to even one single Filipino life. So why waste time on it?” Marcos told reporters.
Duterte, the daughter of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, on Saturday last week delivered an expletive-laden online news conference in which she claimed to have told someone to kill Marcos, first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and Philippine House of Representatives Speaker Martin Romualdez — a Marcos cousin — if she were assassinated.
“If I die, don’t stop until you have killed them,” she said, adding that she was “not joking.”
However, on Tuesday she denied making a death threat, describing her comments as an expression of “consternation” with the Marcos administration’s failures.
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