Philippine investigators on Tuesday summoned Vice President Sara Duterte to answer questions about her public threat to have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr assassinated if she herself were killed.
The National Bureau of Investigation served the subpoena at Duterte’s office, and asked that she appear before the bureau’s director on Friday.
The subpoena said Duterte was being summoned “to shed light on the investigation for alleged grave threats under [the Cybercrime Prevent Act] and possible violation of [the Anti-Terorrism Act].”
Duterte on Saturday said she has already spoken with someone who has agreed to kill Marcos, the first lady, and the speaker of House of Representatives, who is the president’s cousin, if she were to get murdered.
In a statement before the subpoena was issued against her, the vice president said her statement was “taken out of its logical context.”
“The Marcos administration’s insistence that the president’s life is under active threat is ominous,” she said. “There is absolutely no flesh on the bone, and despite the absence of a reliable investigation, authorities were quick to consider this a national security concern.”
“Common sense should be enough for us to understand and accept that a supposed conditional act of revenge does not constitute … an active threat,” she added. “This is [a] plan without … flesh. I am confident that an honest scrutiny would easily expose this narrative to be farce, imagined, or nothing at all.”
Marcos on Monday expressed alarm over Duterte’s threat and said she should be held accountable for it.
“If it’s that easy to plan the assassination of a president, how about ordinary citizens?” he said in a video statement. “Such criminal attempts should not be ignored. I will not condone it. As a democratic country, we need to uphold the rule of law.”
