MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Monday described a public threat by the vice president to have him killed by an assassin as a criminal plot and vowed to fight it, in a looming showdown between the country’s two top leaders.
Vice President Sara Duterte said Saturday in an online news conference that she has contracted an assassin to kill the president, his wife and the speaker of the House of Representatives if she herself is killed, in a threat she warned was not a joke.
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Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, left seated, listens to House Speaker Martin Romualdez shown on an electronic board at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, center, walks while a hearing she is attending is suspended at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte talks to reporters while a hearing she is attending is suspended at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte listens as she attends a hearing at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines on Monday Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte gestures as she attends a hearing at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines on Monday Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
The national police and military immediately boosted the security of the president, and the justice department said it would summon the vice president for an investigation. The National Security Council said it considered the threat a national security concern.
The vice president, a lawyer, later tried to walk back her remarks by saying it was not an actual threat but an expression of concern about her own safety over an unspecified threat.
“Why would I kill him if not for revenge from the grave? There is no reason for me to kill him. What’s the benefit for me?” Duterte told journalists.
“That criminal plot should not be allowed to pass,” Marcos said in a televised statement, without mentioning Duterte by name. “I’ll fight it.”
"As a democratic country, we need to uphold the rule of law,” Marcos said.
Marcos ran with Duterte as his vice-presidential running mate in May 2022 elections and both won landslide victories on a campaign call of national unity. In the Philippines, the two positions are elected separately.
The two leaders and their camps, however, soon had a bitter falling out over key differences, including in their approaches to China’s aggressive territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea. Duterte resigned from the Marcos Cabinet in June as education secretary and head of an anti-insurgency body.
On Monday, Justice Undersecretary Jesse Andres said in a news conference that Duterte would be subpoenaed to face an investigation.
Andres called the vice president the “self-confessed mastermind” of a “premeditated plot to assassinate the president.” All government resources and law enforcement agencies would be mobilized to identify the alleged assassin and determine criminal accountability, he said.
“We have to maintain order in a civilized society by adherence to the rule of law and we will apply the full strength and force of the law on this,” Andres said.
Under Philippine law, such public remarks may constitute a crime of threatening to inflict a wrong on a person or their family and are punishable by a jail term and fine.
The Philippine Constitution says that if a president dies, sustains a permanent disability, is removed from office or resigns, the vice president takes over and serves the rest of the term.
Duterte said she was ready to face investigators or an impeachment complaint in Congress, but added she would also demand answers to her allegations against Marcos and his allies.
“I will also not allow what they did to me to pass,” she told reporters.
The vice president is the daughter of Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, whose police-enforced anti-drug crackdown when he was a city mayor and later president left thousands of mostly petty drug suspects dead in killings that the International Criminal Court has been investigating as a possible crime against humanity.
Like her equally outspoken father, the vice president became a vocal critic of Marcos, his wife Liza Araneta-Marcos and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, the president’s cousin, accusing them of corruption, incompetence and politically persecuting the Duterte family and its supporters.
Last month, the vice president told reporters her relationship with Marcos had “gone so toxic” that she has imagined “cutting his head.
Romualdez told the House of Representatives that the vice president was trying to distract attention from her alleged misuse of public funds, which Congress is investigating. Several legislators reaffirmed their trust in the House speaker and condemned Duterte's remarks.
Her latest tirade was set off by the decision by House members allied with Romualdez and Marcos to detain Duterte's chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, who was accused of hampering a congressional inquiry into the possible misuse of Duterte's budget as vice president and education secretary. Lopez has been detained in a hospital after being traumatized by a plan by legislators to temporarily detain her in prison.
In a pre-dawn online news conference on Saturday, an angry Duterte accused Marcos of incompetence as president and of being a liar along with his wife and the House speaker, in expletive-laden remarks.
When concerns over her security were raised, Duterte, 46, suggested there was an unspecified plot to kill her. “Don’t worry about my security because I’ve talked with somebody. I said ‘if I’m killed, you’ll kill BBM, Liza Araneta and Martin Romualdez. No joke, no joke,’” the vice president said, without elaborating and using the initials that many use to refer to the president.
"I’ve given my order, ‘If I die, don’t stop until you’ve killed them.’ And he said, ’yes,’” the vice president said.
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, left seated, listens to House Speaker Martin Romualdez shown on an electronic board at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, center, walks while a hearing she is attending is suspended at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte talks to reporters while a hearing she is attending is suspended at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte listens as she attends a hearing at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines on Monday Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte gestures as she attends a hearing at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines on Monday Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
The Israeli ambassador to Washington says that a cease-fire deal to end fighting between Israel and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah could be reached “within days.”
Ambassador Mike Herzog told Israeli Army Radio on Monday that there remained “points to finalize” and that any deal required agreement from the government. But he said “we are close to a deal” and that “it can happen within days.”
Among the issues that remain is an Israeli demand to reserve the right to act should Hezbollah violate its obligations under the emerging deal. The deal seeks to push Hezbollah and Israeli troops out of southern Lebanon.
Israel accuses Hezbollah of not adhering to a U.N. resolution that ended the 2006 war between the sides that made similar provisions, and Israel has concerns that Hezbollah could stage a Hamas-style cross-border attack from southern Lebanon if it maintains a heavy presence there. Lebanon says Israel also violated the 2006 resolution. Lebanon complains about military jets and naval ships entering Lebanese territory even when there is no active conflict.
It is not clear whether Lebanon would agree to the demand.
The optimism surrounding a deal comes after a top U.S. envoy held talks between the sides last week in a bid to clinch a deal.
Hezbollah began attacking Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after Hamas’ raid on southern Israel, setting off more than a year of fighting. That escalated into all-out war in September with massive Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon and later an Israeli ground incursion into the country’s south.
Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets into Israeli cities and towns, including some 250 on Sunday.
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JERUSALEM — The Palestinian Health Ministry says Israeli forces killed two people, including a 13-year-old, in the occupied West Bank.
The Israeli military said the two had thrown explosives at forces overnight near the Palestinian town of Yabad and that the forces had responded by opening fire.
The Health Ministry identified the two as Mohammed Hamarsheh, 13, and Ahmad Zayd, 20. It did not disclose details about the circumstances behind their deaths.
It was the latest bloodshed in the West Bank, which has faced a surge of violence throughout the 13-month war in Gaza. The Health Ministry says nearly 800 people have been killed, with more than 160 of them 18 and younger.
Many have been killed in fighting with the Israeli military, but Palestinians throwing rocks and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed. There has also been an increase in Palestinian attacks against Israelis in the West Bank since the war in Gaza began.
JERUSALEM — The Israeli government has ordered all public entities to stop advertising in the Haaretz newspaper, which is known for its critical coverage of Israel’s actions in the Palestinian territories.
Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said Sunday that the government had approved his proposal after Haaretz’ publisher called for sanctions against Israel and referred to Palestinian militants as “freedom fighters.”
“We advocate for a free press and freedom of expression, but also the freedom of the government to decide not to fund incitement against the State of Israel,” Karhi wrote on the social platform X.
Noa Landau, the deputy editor of Haaretz, accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “working to silence independent and critical media,” comparing him to autocratic leaders in other countries.
Haaretz regularly publishes investigative journalism and opinion columns critical of Israel’s ongoing half-century occupation of lands the Palestinians want for a future state.
It has also been critical of Israel’s war conduct in Gaza at a time when most local media support the war and largely ignore the suffering of Palestinian civilians.
In a speech in London last month, Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken said Israel has imposed “a cruel apartheid regime” on the Palestinians and was battling “Palestinian freedom fighters that Israel calls ‘terrorists.’”
He later issued a statement, saying he had reconsidered his remarks.
“For the record, Hamas are not freedom fighters,” he posted on X. “I should have said: using terrorism is illegitimate. I was wrong not to say that.”
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s supreme leader has suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should be “sentenced to death” for his role in the ongoing wars in the Gaza Strip against Hamas and in Lebanon.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the remarks Monday during an event in which he spoke to members of the Basij, the all-volunteer arm of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Khamenei referenced the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and Israel’s former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
“What the Zionist regime did in Gaza and Lebanon is not a victory, it is a war crime. Now they have issued a warrant for their arrest. This is not enough!” Khamenei said, according to remarks published by the state-run IRNA news agency. “Netanyahu and the criminal leaders of this regime must be sentenced to death.”
The International Criminal Court at the Hague does not issue death sentences.
Khamenei also insisted those in Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance,” like the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, would be stronger after the war.
“The idiots should not think that bombing houses and hospitals in Gaza and Lebanon is a victory,” he said. “The enemy has not become winner in Gaza and Lebanon, and it will not be winner.”
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses lawmakers in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, in Jerusalem. Monday Nov. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
A man comforts her daughter as they look at their destroyed building where they were living, which was hit Sunday night in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A man throws debris from his damaged apartment which was resulted from Sunday's Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A woman looks through her damaged apartment which was resulted from Sunday's Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A man takes pictures by his mobile phone at his damaged apartment which was resulted from Sunday's Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Residents pass in front of destroyed building which was resulted from Sunday's Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A Civil Defense worker uses a skid loader to remove the rubble in front of a destroyed building that was hit Sunday night in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A man checks his damaged apartment which was resulted from Sunday's Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Residents pass in front of a destroyed building that was hit Sunday night in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A bulldozer removes the rubble in front of a destroyed building that was hit Sunday night in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Bulldozers remove the rubble of a destroyed building that was hit Sunday night in an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
