“It will be easier to get the details of everything if you can talk to the accused directly,” President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. says.
VANCOUVER, Canada — President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said on Saturday, July 4, that he would like to appear before the prosecution if he is the one being tried.
“But if I’m trying to put myself in that position. Perhaps, myself, if I were the accused, I would almost insist – on the advice of the lawyers, if they advised me not to appear, I would insist on appearing. Because I can answer, let’s answer (Because I can answer the allegations, so I will continue to do so),” Marcos told reporters in Vancouver after his official visit.
Marcos said this a few days before the Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, began hearing the case to remove Vice President Sara Duterte from power.
The president noted that although “it’s up to the accused whether they feel the need to come forward or not,” it would be “much easier to get the details of everything if you can talk to the accused directly.”
Marcos served as a senator-judge during the 2012 impeachment trial of the late Chief Justice Renato Corona. The case, which lasted several months, ended with Corona being convicted and removed from power. Marcos voted “not guilty” in the trial, which Corona attended.
Duterte was once an ally of Marcos. The two ran together in 2022 and Duterte was Marcos’ education chief until he resigned in 2024.
Tensions between the two politicians, their clans, allies and supporters reached a fever pitch in late 2024 when Duterte said during a video conference that he was in contact with an alleged assassin tasked with killing Marcos, his first wife Liza Araneta-Marcos, and then Speaker of the House Martin Romualdez, citing threats against himself.
The video conference was among the allegations mentioned in the complaint to impeach the Parliament and is expected to be examined during the trial. – Rappler.com
