Sara Duterte posts 360,000 pesos bail on three grave-threats counts against the Marcoses

Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte posted 360,000 pesos, about $5,740, in bail on 5 September on three counts of grave threats. Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 98, Judge Maria Angelica De Ramos, then lifted the arrest warrant issued on Friday. Bail was set at 120,000 pesos a count. Court staff took her fingerprints. She left the Hall of Justice in black clothes, hugged a crying supporter, and held up the order her lawyers told her to carry.

The charges come from a November 2024 online press conference. Prosecutors say she told an assassin to kill President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta Marcos, and then-House Speaker Martin Romualdez, the president's cousin, if she herself were killed. She denies the case. The court found probable cause on all three counts.

Duterte said she posted bail because she does not trust the police or the courts with her body. If she refused, she would be taken in. If she paid, the harassment would not stop, but the public would see her. She asked who would answer if she died that night and said the police would call it an accident. She asked reporters to walk with her to the fifth floor. She said officers have followed her since 2023.

The presidential office said on Friday it would respect the court's order. It did not answer her Saturday remarks about her safety. Attorney Paul Lawrence Lim said after Friday's warrant that she would fight the charges.

The vice presidency and the presidency have been in open conflict for more than a year. An arrest warrant against a sitting vice president is rare in Manila. Paying bail keeps her free and converts the fight into a criminal trial with a public gallery. That is the outcome she chose. It is also the outcome that leaves the November 2024 recording as the evidence the court will hear, rather than as a political clip on social media.

What happens next is procedural. Trial dates, motions to dismiss, and the question of whether a vice president can be tried while in office will fill the next hearings. The political clock is separate. Marcos and Duterte still share a government they no longer share a ticket for. A threats case does not remove her from office by itself. It does put her fingerprints in a Quezon City file and put the November briefing on a court record. That is the change Saturday made.