Philippines VP Duterte Quits Marcos Cabinet in Sign of Rift

Andreo Calonzo
·1-min read

(Bloomberg) -- Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte has quit from President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s Cabinet, in the strongest sign yet of fractures within the ruling coalition.

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Marcos accepted Duterte resignation as education chief and vice-chair of the anti-communist task force effective July 19, the president’s communications office said Wednesday. Duterte, who will remain as vice president, didn’t provide a reason for her decision, it added.

“My resignation is not born out of weakness,” Duterte said in a televised briefing, where she detailed her projects in the Education Department.

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Duterte’s departure from Marcos’s Cabinet highlights how the rift between the Southeast Asian nation’s two most powerful political families have persisted, two years after they teamed up for landslide election wins in 2022. The fractures could also reshape the country’s political landscape less than a year before the midterm elections.

The vice president is the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte, who has had disagreements with Marcos on issues including the nation’s approach towards Beijing in the South China Sea and traded barbs about drug use. Duterte and her father have also criticized Marcos’s efforts to change the Constitution.

Marcos has in the past months played down the rift with the Dutertes, saying in late April that he doesn’t see a reason to strip the vice-president of her Cabinet post. Last week, both the former leader and Vice President Duterte criticized Marcos’s government for supposedly using “excessive force” to arrest his supporter, televangelist Apollo Quiboloy, who’s accused of human trafficking and sexual abuse.

(Updates with details throughout.)

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