TOKYO: Political violence is nothing new in the Philippines. It was, after all, the site of the world’s worst massacre of media workers when 58 people, including 32 journalists, were murdered in 2009 while traveling in an election convoy on the southern island of Mindanao.
The powerful Ampatuan clan had pre-dug a vast grave in preparation for the cars carrying relatives of their rival, Esmael Mangudadatu, to arrive at a police checkpoint. Heavily armed gunmen intercepted the motorcade, killing then burying them all. I was on Mindanao soon after as part of a team of press freedom groups including the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists that examined the killings: It was a chilling scene. There’s been a steady stream of local assassinations and kidnappings ever since, and plenty beforehand, too.
So when Vice President Sara Duterte – daughter of former president Rodrigo Duterte – released a bizarre video on Nov 23, telling President Ferdinand Marcos Jr she would have him assassinated if someone did the same to her, many rolled their eyes and prepared for another round of hostilities. The influential media site Rappler was first to draw the similarities: Sara Duterte Unleashes The Ampatuan Within, its headline read, noting her video was released on the 15th anniversary of the massacre.
Duterte announced her resignation from Marcos’ Cabinet in June, while remaining vice president, highlighting the extent of the fallout between the two families. Since then, she’s been escalating her criticisms of the president, threatening to exhume his father’s remains and throw them in the sea, and saying that she imagined beheading him.
Duterte also alleged, as others have before her, that the Marcos family plotted the assassination of former senator Benigno Aquino – a member of another large political dynasty – in 1983.