Sara Duterte takes her oath as the next Vice President on June 19, 2022 in Davao, Philippines with her father Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and her mother Elizabeth Zimmerman by her side. Photo: VCG

 
Philippine security agencies stepped up safety protocols on Saturday after Vice President Sara Duterte said she would have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr assassinated if she herself were killed, according to Reuters report.

In a dramatic sign of a widening rift between the two most powerful political families in the Southeast Asian nation, Duterte told an early morning press conference that she instructed an assassin to kill Marcos, his wife, and the speaker of the Philippine House, if she were to be killed, Reuters reported.

"This country is going to hell because we are led by a person who doesn't know how to be a president and who is a liar," she said in the briefing publicly broadcast on her Facebook page.

"I have talked to a person. I said, if I get killed, go kill BBM (Marcos), (first lady) Liza Araneta, and (Speaker) Martin Romualdez. No joke. No joke," Duterte said in the briefing. "I said, do not stop until you kill them, and then he said yes."

She was responding to an online commenter urging her to stay safe, saying she was in hostile territory as she was at the lower chamber of Congress overnight with her chief of staff.

Sara Duterte, the daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte, retained her role as Marcos's deputy after resigning from her post as education secretary in the cabinet in June.

The presidential communications office said Duterte's remarks were being taken as a serious public threat against Marcos.

"Acting on the vice president's clear and unequivocal statement that she had contracted an assassin to kill the president if an alleged plot against her succeeds, the executive secretary has referred the threat to the Presidential Security Command for immediate proper action," it said in a statement. "Any threat to the life of the president must be taken seriously, more so that this threat has been publicly revealed in clear and certain terms," it added.

Global Times