Philippine President receives assassination threat from his deputy

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has received an assassination threat from none other than his own deputy. The East Asian country’s Vice President Sara Duterte said that she already has an assassin in place for the President, his wife and the Speaker of the House of Representatives if she is somehow herself killed. Duterte warned that it shouldn't be taken as a joke. It was a show of support for her chief of staff Zuleika Lopez, who had been detained at the House of Representatives building since Wednesday after a committee cited the official for contempt. “Don’t worry about your security because I have already spoken to someone about it,” Duterte-Carpio said of her plan.Lopez faced criticism from the House good government committee after it found that she wrote to the state auditing body not to release to the panel its damaging report on Duterte-Carpio’s alleged misuse of 125 million pesos (US$2.12 million) worth of her confidential funds. Lopez was later detained for “undue interference in proceedings” of the committee. On Saturday, she was hospitalised after falling ill and Duterte-Carpio stayed by her side.
After her statement, Philippine security agencies stepped up safety protocols on Saturday."We are also closely coordinating with law enforcement agencies to detect, deter, and defend against any and all threats to the president and the first family," it said in a statement. Police Chief Rommel Francisco Marbil said he had ordered an immediate investigation, adding that "any direct or indirect threat to his life must be addressed with the highest level of urgency".
Under the Philippine penal code, such public remarks may constitute a crime of threatening to inflict a wrong on a person or his family and is punishable by a jail term and fine.The vice president is the daughter of Marcos' predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte.Marcos ran with Duterte as his vice-presidential running mate in the May 2022 elections and both won with landslide victories on a campaign call of national unity.mThe two leaders and their camps, however, rapidly had a bitter falling-out over key differences, including in their approaches to China's aggressive actions in the disputed South China Sea. Duterte resigned from the Marcos Cabinet in June as education secretary and head of an anti-insurgency body.