DOJ notes father-daughter ‘contemporaneous acts’
THE Department of Justice (DOJ) yesterday said the call of former President Rodrigo Duterte for the military and the police to “protect the Constitution” and the death threats aired by his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, against President Marcos Jr. and his wife, and Speaker Martin Romualdez could be part of a destabilization plot against government.
“The Vice President is a beneficiary of whatever will happen to a sitting President. And given the contemporaneous acts of the former president, her own father, declaring that we have no effective government, this is again another matter that complicates things,” Justice Undersecretary Jesse Andres said in an interview with ANC.
“It puts into light the real reason, the probable, this may be part or parcel of a bigger plan of destabilization,” he added.
Over the weekend, the Vice President said she has contracted an individual to kill Marcos, First Lady Liza Marcos, and Romualdez in the event that she is killed. She later said her statement was “taken out of its logical context” as she said she was merely asking an individual to take revenge against three persons in case she is killed.
The elder Duterte, in an online press conference last Monday, sought the military’s intervention to “protect the Constitution” amid what he described as a “fractured” government. He said it is only the military that can correct the wrongs in the current administration, but stopped short from calling for a coup.
Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin on Tuesday said the former president “should desist from being as irresponsible as he has become” and implied an ouster plot that would make his daughter the Chief Executive.
“No motive is more selfish than calling for a sitting president to be overthrown so that your daughter can take over. And he will go to great and evil lengths, such as insulting our professional Armed Forces by asking them to betray their oath, for his plan to succeed,” he said.
The DOJ has described the elder Duterte’s statements as “bordering on sedition” and said legal actions may be looked into.
Andres, at a public briefing yesterday, said the DOJ is not ruling out the possibility of issuing a subpoena to the former president so he could explain his statements.
“The Department of Justice, through the National Bureau of Investigation, and together with the Philippine National Police, we are all monitoring these utterances of the past president. The former president has statements urging the military to take action. That is another dangerous action that is threatening possibly national security,” he said.
“The judicial process requires everyone the opportunity to be heard. It is our obligation to give him the opportunity to be heard within the context of an investigation, with due process, and assisted by his counsel, so that it will be in conformity with the requirements of the rule of law,” Andres said.
He said there is nothing political in the DOJ’s actions.
“We have no other agenda but to enforce the law to the limit so that we can show to the world, show to our citizens, that no one is above the law,” he said.
“Whether you have power or influence or you are an ordinary citizen, you have to face the law equally, and uniformly it will be applied,” he added.