A militant lawmaker filed grave threat charges against former President Rodrigo Duterte after he allegedly threatened to kill her and called her a communist.
House Deputy Minority Leader and ACT Teacher party-list Rep. France Castro filed the criminal complaint before the Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office.
“It was a serious threat to my life, especially at that time while I was mourning the death of my father. That was the time that he threatened my life,” Castro said.
She was at her father’s wake when she learned about Duterte’s remark during an interview with local broadcaster SMNI on Oct. 10, which she said constituted the crime of “grave threats” under the Cybercrime Prevention Act.
Duterte gave on-air advice to his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, about how she could use intelligence and confidential funds allocated to her office and the education department, which she also heads.
“Your first target with your intelligence fund is you, you France.
Tell her, it is you communists who I want to kill,” Duterte said in the interview that was shared thousands of times on Facebook. It was later deleted from SMNI’s Facebook page.
The House appropriations committee decided on the same day to divert the funds allocated to some government departments, including the P650 million for the OVP and DepEd.
In her complaint, Castro said Duterte’s threats were “factually baseless and clearly malicious,” but she could not dismiss them as “figurative, joking, or otherwise benign.”
Former executive secretary Salvador Medialdea said Duterte has not yet received a copy of the complaint.
Duterte’s former chief presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo dismissed the complaint as having “no legal basis” and was only filed “for propaganda purposes.”
“It’s not a threat. Because a threat is: ‘I will kill you.’ But when you say ‘I want to kill you,’ that’s only expressing a desire,” Panelo said in an interview with ANC’s Dateline Philippines.
Castro’s lawyer Antonio La Vina told reporters that it was the first criminal complaint filed against Duterte since he left office.
Duterte was protected from prosecution when he was president, but now that he is an ordinary citizen, he can be charged for alleged crimes committed.
“I was really shocked with the threats,” Castro said.
“He can no longer hide [behind presidential immunity from suit]. He must be accountable for threatening my life,” she added.
La Vina said the maximum penalty for “grave threats” was six years in jail and a fine of up to P100,000.
Duterte often threatened to kill people, including drug dealers and rights activists, when he was president from 2016 to 2022.He also frequently labeled critics as communist sympathizers – a practice known as “red-tagging,” which can result in the arrest, detention, or even death of the person targeted. With AFP
