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.
The Department of Justice said it was also looking into potentially seditious remarks by Mr Marcos’s successor and Mr Duterte, who said in a news conference that the civilian government would only listen if the military voiced concerns about corruption and irregularities under the Marcos administration.
“There is a fractured governance. It is only the military who can correct it,” the former president told a news conference Monday night.
He said he was not agitating the military to rise against President Marcos but only affirming the real situation in the Philippines.
Justice officials said an investigation into the former president’s remarks would proceed, however.
The criminal complaints for assaulting, disobeying and grave coercion against police authorities were filed against the Vice-President and her security and other aides before state prosecutors, a police statement said.
The complaints were set off by a row in the House of Representatives over the weekend, where Ms Duterte’s chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, has been temporarily detained.
Mr Lopez has been accused by legislators of obstructing and not cooperating with a congressional enquiry into alleged misuse of confidential and intelligence funds by the offices of the vice-president and education secretary when Ms Duterte headed it under the Marcos administration.
