PHILIPPINE police officials filed criminal charges against Vice-President Sara Duterte and her security staff today for allegedly assaulting and disobeying orders from authorities in a recent altercation in Congress.

The criminal complaints filed by the Quezon City police are separate from any legal action that may arise after she publicly threatened to have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, his wife and the House of Representatives speaker assassinated if she were killed herself in an unspecified plot. 

President Marcos’s legal offensive against Ms Duterte, her ex-president father Rodrigo and their allies is a critical point in a conflict that has seethed in the last two years between the two most powerful families in the Philippines.