The relationship between Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte and President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr hit a new low last week, after Duterte launched a scathing attack on the president in a two-hour-long press conference on October 18.
In the extraordinary outburst, Duterte threatened to dig up the remains of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., the former Philippine dictator and father of the current president. “One of these days, I will go there. I will get the body of your father and throw it in the West Philippine Sea,” she said.
The personal attacks did not stop there. Duterte claimed Marcos Jr. had humiliated a graduate at a recent ceremony, an act that she said made her want to behead him. “I wanted to remove his head… (I) just imagine myself cutting his head,” she said, whilst gesturing a throat slit with her hands.
Duterte’s comments add fuel to the fire in the ongoing war of words between her family and its allies and the Marcos camp, which has heated up since her resignation as education secretary back in June.
However, for as long as Duterte serves as vice president, who is elected separately from the president, it seems Marcos is powerless to remove this infection at the heart of the Philippine government.
According to the vice president, the administration is “on the road to hell” without a clear direction or policies. Duterte has also accused Marcos of lacking leadership and “using” her in the run-up to the 2022 presidential election.
The current state of affairs is a far cry from that election, when Marcos Jr and Duterte entered into an alliance and won a lopsided election victory. Back then, the relationship between two of the Philippines’ most famous political families was cordial.
In fact, it was Sara’s father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, who sanctioned the burial of Ferdinand Marcos’ corpse at the Cemetery of National Heroes in Manila. The 2016 burial was extremely controversial given Marcos’ bloody Martial Law regime decades earlier, but encapsulated the strength of goodwill between the two political dynasties at that time.
These good relations have since disintegrated. The current state of affairs may be linked with Marcos’s determined pursuit of Apollo Quiboloy, a decades-long ally of the Duterte family who founded the Kingdom of Jesus Christ (KOJC) church.
The Filipino pastor, who is also wanted by the FBI, is currently sitting in a Pasig City jail facing human trafficking charges. Sara Duterte said that his plight was a central motivation in her decision to resign from Marcos’s cabinet.
Duterte has since openly criticized Marcos, stating in the run-up to Quiboloy’s arrest that the police presence at his KOJC church compound in Davao City was an “abuse of power and the assault on the freedom of religion.” She even apologized for urging KOJC members to support Marcos in the 2022 election.
While Marcos has largely refrained from commenting publicly on Duterte’s numerous outbursts (although his son did suggest the VP could be suffering from mental health issues), there are signs he is beginning to push back. Last month, the Philippine House of Representatives, which is led by a cousin of Marcos, slashed the budget of the Vice President’s Office by nearly two-thirds. Sara Duterte also claims to be the victim of consistent political attacks from Marcos and his allies.
The months-long fallout between the Duterte and Marcos clans demonstrates how the fault lines are already being redrawn ahead of next year’s midterms and even the presidential election in 2028, where it is widely believed Sara will run for the top job.
Over the past year, the Duterte family has attended numerous “prayer rallies,” which they have used to advance their anti-Marcos agenda. The rallies, attended by thousands, show that the Dutertes are already in campaign mode. This is no surprise given the fact that Rodrigo Duterte is running again for the Davao mayoralty, and that all of his children are running for high office.
However, a political discourse stuck in constant campaign mode is distracting from substantive issues and undermining democracy in the Philippines. The Philippine Daily Inquirer observed how the “excitement” surrounding the 2025 elections is “taking attention away from (politicians’) important work to serve the public,” including issues such as poor education, inflation, and rising unemployment.
Instead, the Filipino people are subjected to a discourse that encapsulates the prevalence of personality over policy in Philippine politics.
However, Duterte’s most recent rant may have been ill-advised. SunStar Davao, a local publication close to the Duterte clan, reported on an October poll which showed Sara Duterte’s favorability, including her trustworthiness, had declined since the recent tirade.
There is more than a touch of irony in the notion that Sara Duterte has threatened to dig up the very corpse to whom her father granted a hero’s burial.
Her words represent the extent of the rift between the Duterte and Marcos clans, which is only set to widen ahead of next year’s midterms, consequently leaving a gaping chasm at the heart of the Philippine government.