MANILA, Philippines, Nov 25, (AP): Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr on Monday described a public threat by the vice president to have him killed by an assassin as a criminal plot and vowed to fight it, in a looming showdown between the country’s two top leaders. Vice President Sara Duterte said Saturday in an online news conference that she has contracted an assassin to kill the president, his wife and the speaker of the House of Representatives if she herself is killed, in a threat she warned was not a joke.

The national police and military immediately boosted the security of the president, and the justice department said it would summon the vice president for an investigation. The National Security Council said it considered the threat a national security concern. The vice president, a lawyer, later tried to walk back her remarks by saying it was not an actual threat but an expression of concern about her own safety over an unspecified threat.

"Why would I kill him if not for revenge from the grave? There is no reason for me to kill him. What’s the benefit for me?” Duterte told journalists. "That criminal plot should not be allowed to pass,” Marcos said in a televised statement, without mentioning Duterte by name. "I’ll fight it.” "As a democratic country, we need to uphold the rule of law,” Marcos said. Marcos ran with Duterte as his vice-presidential running mate in May 2022 elections and both won landslide victories on a campaign call of national unity.

In the Philippines, the two positions are elected separately. The two leaders and their camps, however, soon had a bitter falling out over key differences, including in their approaches to China’s aggressive territorial claims in the disputed South China Sea. Duterte resigned from the Marcos Cabinet in June as education secretary and head of an anti-insurgency body.

On Monday, Justice Undersecretary Jesse Andres said in a news conference that Duterte would be subpoenaed to face an investigation. Andres called the vice president the "self-confessed mastermind” of a "premeditated plot to assassinate the president.” All government resources and law enforcement agencies would be mobilized to identify the alleged assassin and determine criminal accountability, he said.