Would the Marcoses go for the jugular, as analysts put it?
Heat, sparks of quarrel may affect local elections.
The Marcos camp may think the Dutertes have to be eliminated politically on or before the mid-term elections. Otherwise, the Dutertes would be a threat to the Marcoses after 2025, on the way to 2028.
Obviously, local fights in next year’s elections will be extensions of sort in the Duterte- Marcos battle. Duterte candidates vs. Marcos bets.
SHATTERED TIES: ‘POINT OF NO RETURN.’ On the political relations between the Dutertes and Marcoses, VP Sara said it has reached “the point of no return.” Though she could speak only for herself, the worsening quarrel unavoidably drags all the other Dutertes, just as it pulls into the brawl all the other Marcoses, in name or political ties.
Not only are they not allies anymore -- forged in the 2022 presidential-VP elections -- they’re now bitter enemies.
THREAT TO KILL; IMPEACHMENT. Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio might be impeached. President Bongbong Marcos Jr. said Friday, Nov. 29 [2024], he had told Congress not to file an impeachment complaint. But that remains an option.
Congress is theoretically independent but the President controls House through its leaders and members aligned with the administration.
Marcos said “The impeachment doesn’t make a difference to even one single Filipino life. Why waste time on it?” To the protagonists in the political warfare, it would be Sara’s “end,” a prospect she acknowledged.
The more serious basis for her removal: her threat to have the President, his wife and the House speaker killed if they would’ve her (Sara) killed. While she later withdrew the threat, minimizing its actual weight, authorities considered it serious enough to investigate.
CHARGES VS. DIGONG, CO-PRINCIPALS, ACCOMPLICES in crimes arising from the war against illegal drugs Duterte’s term as president from 2016 to 2022. The former president might be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court, even arrested, with the Marcos administration allowing, or not resisting, the arrest and detention. Those who executed alleged orders to kill could be charged in local courts. Despite Duterte’s dramatic embrace of full liability, the law does not heap all penalties on just the leader or mastermind.
If the Dutertees would push to sow unrest, Marcos Jr. might use laws such as the Anti-Terrorism Law and measures such as mass arrests of dissenters in the name of protecting the state.
DUTERTE CAMP COULD SOW UNREST, exemplified by the massing of protesters at Edsa, apparently prompted if not organized by the Dutertes. Crowds could grow, the organizers aiming to make the demonstration large and destabilizing enough to topple Marcos Jr. Government forces might be unleashed, which then presidents Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and Joseph Estrada avoided or failed to do.
GOING AFTER LOCAL OFFICIALS identified with the opposition, suspending or dismissing them, purportedly under the law’s process, and fielding and supporting election candidates loyal to the administration. Could the Duterte opposition match administration’s resources, which are expected to be tapped to make its candidates win.