Philippine police file criminal complaints against Vice President Sara Duterte and her security aides

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

The criminal complaints filed by the Quezon City police were separate from any legal action that may arise after she publicly threatened to have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife and the speaker of the House of Representatives assassinated if she were killed herself in an unspecified plot. She has not provided details of that plot.

A presidential adviser, Larry Gadon, separately filed a Supreme Court petition on Wednesday to disbar the vice president as a lawyer, citing her assassination threats, which he said were “illegal, immoral and condemnable.”

The Marcos administration’s legal offensive against Duterte, her father and their allies is a critical juncture in a conflict that has seethed over the last two years between the two most powerful families in the Philippines.

The Department of Justice said it is also looking into potentially seditious remarks by Marcos’s predecessor and the vice president’s father, Rodrigo Duterte, who said in a news conference that the civilian government would only listen if the military voices 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 said Monday night. He said he was not urging the military to rise up against Marcos but only reaffirming the real situation in the Philippines.

Still, justice officials said an investigation into the former president’s remarks will proceed.

The criminal complaints for