DUTERTES UNDER SCRUTINY
Her stunning remarks were the latest salvo in an bitter row that has intensified since the collapse of a formidable alliance between their two powerful families that saw Marcos, the son and namesake of the Philippines’ late authoritarian leader, win the 2022 election by a huge margin.
She quit her cabinet post in June and has battled against legislative scrutiny of her spending while in office, at times responding with open hostility to lawmakers and failing to show up for some proceedings.
Her threat to have Marcos killed stemmed from an order by lawmakers to transfer her chief-of-staff to a jail for allegedly impeding its probe over the vice president’s alleged misuse of public funds.
According to a senior justice department official, the vice president does not have immunity from prosecution.
Marcos said it was vital for the interests of good governance that elected officials do not impede the work of legislators, adding “we will not have reached this drama if legitimate questions by Congress were answered”.
Sara Duterte’s attack on Marcos also comes just weeks after the mercurial Rodrigo Duterte was the subject of marathon enquiries in the house and Senate into thousands of killings during the notorious “war on drugs” that defined his 2016 to 2022 presidency.
During those hearings, the Marcos administration for the first time signaled it would cooperate with any international effort to arrest the former president, who is being investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for possible crimes against humanity.
Rodrigo Duterte told the hearings he was solely responsible for the bloody crackdown and has urged the ICC to “hurry up” on its probe.
Source: CNA
