Philippine police filed criminal charges against VP S…

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine police officials filed criminal complaints Wednesday against Vice President Sara Duterte and her security personnel for allegedly assaulting and disobeying orders during a recent row in Congress.

The criminal complaints filed by the Quezon City police were separate from any legal action that may follow. publicly threatened to kill President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, if she herself was killed in an unspecified plot. She did not provide details of this conspiracy.

The Marcos administration’s legal assault on Duterte, her father and their allies is a critical moment in the conflict that raged for the past two years between the two most powerful families in the Philippines.

The Justice Department said it was also looking into potentially inflammatory remarks by Marcos’ successor and the vice president’s father. Rodrigo Dutertewho told a press conference that the civilian government would only listen if the military raised concerns about corruption and irregularities during the Marcos administration.

“There is a divided administration … Only the military can fix it,” the former president said at a news conference Monday night. He said he was not agitating for the military to rebel against Marcos, but was only confirming the real situation in the Philippines.

However, representatives of the judiciary said that the investigation into the former president’s statements will continue.

Criminal charges have been filed against the vice president and her security staff and other assistants at the state prosecutor’s office for assault, disobedience and gross violence against police, the police said in a statement. Such crimes are punishable by imprisonment and a fine.

The complaints were sparked by a chaotic altercation over the weekend in the House of Representatives, where the vice president’s chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, was temporarily detained. Lawmakers accused Lopez of obstructing a congressional investigation into the alleged misuse of confidential and intelligence funds by the offices of the vice president and education secretary when Sara Duterte headed them during the Marcos administration.

At one point, the authorities received an order to transfer Lopez to a women’s prison near Congress, which caused her anxiety. The vice president and her staff stepped in to challenge the order, and Lopez was eventually transferred to a state hospital, where she remains in custody.

“The rule of law is fundamental to our democratic system. No one, regardless of their position, should be above accountability,” National Police Chief General Rommel Francisco Marbil said of the criminal complaints against the vice president and her aides. The National Police “remains committed to ensuring the proper execution of lawful orders and the maintenance of public order.”

“Resisting and disobeying an authority figure not only violates the law, but also undermines public trust,” Marbil said.

In other news, Philippine authorities subpoenaed the vice president’s office on Tuesday, asking her to answer questions from investigators about threats she made over the weekend. Duterte said she did not make direct threats but expressed concern for her own safety.

Marcos said in a public televised address that the vice president’s threats against him, his wife Lisa Marcos and House Speaker Martin Romualdez were a criminal conspiracy and vowed to fight it and uphold the rule of law.

In the 2022 elections, Marcos ran with Sarah Duterte as his running mate, and both won landslide victories on a call for national unity. In the Philippines, the president and vice president are elected separately, and this has led to rival politicians occupying the top political posts in a country with deep political and social divisions.

Since then, the two leaders and their camps have clashed over key differences, including their approaches to China’s aggressive territorial claims i n the disputed South China Sea and views on ex-President Duterte’s deadly drug war that has left thousands of mostly poor suspects dead.

In June, Duterte resigned from the Marcos cabinet as education secretary and head of the anti-insurgency body and became one of the most vocal critics of the president, his wife and Romualdez, the president’s cousin, who heads a congress dominated by their allies.