Philippine President Marcos says he’ll fight vice president’s plot to have him killed

MANILA, Philippines — Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Monday described a public threat by the vice president to have him killed by an assassin as a criminal plot and vowed to fight it, in a looming showdown between the country’s two top leaders. The vice president is the daughter of Marcos’ predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, whose police-enforced anti-drug crackdown when he was a city mayor and later president left thousands of mostly petty drug suspects dead in killings that the International Criminal Court has been investigating as a possible crime against humanity. Like her equally outspoken father, the vice president became a vocal critic of Marcos, his wife Liza Araneta-Marcos and House Speaker Martin Romualdez, the president’s cousin, accusing them of corruption, incompetence and politically persecuting the Duterte family and its supporters. “I’ve given my order, ‘If I die, don’t stop until you’ve killed them.’ And he said, ’yes,’” the vice president said.