Philippine court orders arrest of VP Duterte over President Marcos threats 

A Philippine court has ordered the arrest of Vice President Sara Duterte over allegations that she arranged the assassination of the president.

The warrant was issued on Friday by a court in Quezon City, near Manila, after judges rejected a bid by her lawyers to delay it.

Duterte is accused of threatening to kill former political ally President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, as well as his wife and a former speaker of the House of Representatives.

Bail was set at $1,900 for each of three charges of “grave threat” filed against her last month. It adds to the legal issues for the vice president, who is already fighting for her political survival.

The threats are central to an impeachment trial launched in the upper house Senate. A guilty verdict would remove her from office and end her 2028 presidential ambitions.

The dispute dates back to November 2024, when Duterte said she had arranged for a hitman to kill Marcos, his wife, and his cousin, Martin Romualdez, then speaker of the House of Representatives, should she be killed.

She insisted that she had only been voicing fear for her safety after falling out with the president.

Her lawyer, Paul Lawrence Lim, said in a statement that Duterte had “no intention of evading the law and will continue to exercise all her legal remedies”.

A justice department spokesman confirmed the warrant, rejecting her legal team’s argument that she cannot be prosecuted while the same conduct is being examined in her impeachment trial.

She is unlikely to be detained soon, however. Officials expect her to post bail quickly.

A conviction on the criminal charge carries at most a sentence of six months in jail, far lighter than the political cost she faces.

The House of Representatives, Congress’s lower chamber, impeachment process is also based on charges related to corruption and unexplained wealth allegations, stemming from her time as vice president and earlier as education secretary.

The Senate hearing, in which she denies any wrongdoing, has been running for nine weeks.

Duterte – the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte – and Marcos ran as running mates in 2022 before their alliance collapsed into open hostility.

Her father is now in International Criminal Court custody in The Hague, awaiting a trial over the deadly anti-drugs campaign he ran as president, which is estimated to have cost tens of thousands of lives.