Philstar.com
November 24, 2025 | 9:22am
MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Sara Duterte refused to say whether she is prepared to assume the presidency should President Ferdinand Marcos vacate his post.
She deflected questions as calls from her own political camp for Marcos to resign have intensified.
“I will not answer that right now because we will have chaos,” Duterte told News5 when pressed on whether she was ready to succeed Marcos. Under the Constitution, the vice president is next in the line of succession.
Duterte’s remarks come as the administration grapples with public outrage over multibillion-peso “ghost” flood-control projects and explosive drug allegations made by a member of the Marcos family itself. During an Iglesia ni Cristo rally earlier this month, Sen. Imee Marcos publicly claimed her brother, the president, and First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos were drug addicts.
Malacañang and the Marcos family have denied the Imee’s accusations, calling them a form of desperation and noting that Marcos had already subjected himself to a drug test, which turned out negative.
Duterte, however, still said the president should take a drug test in light of persistent rumors about people they had allegedly partied with.
“If you are the president, vice president or government official, you cannot say no when challenged to undergo a drug test, neuropsychiatric exam or other exams related to competency,” she said.
Malacañang also pushed back, pointing out that Duterte’s own father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, had openly admitted to using marijuana and abusing fentanyl.
“Did she order her father to undergo a drug test?” Presidential Communications Undersecretary Claire Castro said, adding that the president is focused on governance while “others have shown signs of uncontrollable anger issues.”
Her own father, Rodrigo Duterte, was also dared to undergo and make public a neuropsychiatric exam while he was president, but the calls fell flat.
Against this backdrop, Senate President Pro Tempore Panfilo Lacson rejected proposals circulating online—including a transition council and a purported military-backed “reset”—calling them unconstitutional even as retired generals reportedly offered him a position in a proposed junta.
“I hope such military-backed intervention would not happen because nothing good can come out of it,” Lacson said in a dzBB interview, urging the public to continue expressing outrage over anomalous flood-control projects but to reject “extra-legal and unconstitutional ways” of changing leadership. — Based on reports from The STAR