Vice President Sara Duterte on July 30, 2026 accused the news organization Abante of publishing a deliberately spliced and misleading video of her speech outside the International Criminal Court detention facility in The Hague, Netherlands, and followed with a second statement defending her underlying point on gun violence. The tabloid issued a same-day apology.
In her first statement, Duterte said Abante’s social media platforms had circulated a clip on July 29 under the caption “I CAN HIRE A GUNMAN FOR ₱5,000,” which she said isolated a single sentence from her remarks and stripped it of the explanation that immediately followed. She said the presentation created a false impression inconsistent with the substance and intent of her speech, and called on the outlet to uphold fair, contextual, and accurate reporting.
Hours later, she released a second statement titled “Gun Violence is a reality not just a clickbait,” arguing that gun violence in the Philippines had become alarmingly commonplace and should not be reduced to a passing remark. She said reports of shootings, killings, and other violent crimes had grown so frequent that many Filipinos had become accustomed to them, and maintained that citizen safety must be treated as a national priority. She closed with “Justice for Filipinos!” and “God save the Philippines!”
The remarks stemmed from a rally outside the ICC detention center, where former President Rodrigo Duterte is held. According to GMA News, the Vice President argued that the implementation of a government program does not in itself constitute a crime against humanity, and that deaths attributed to her father’s anti-drug campaign could not automatically be classified as drug war victims given the prevalence of gun violence. To illustrate the point, she offered a hypothetical about hiring a gunman for P5,000 to kill a spouse’s mistress, saying killings could instead reflect crimes of passion, robbery, or other motives.
The figures underlying that debate remain contested. The Filipino Times reported that official government records placed deaths during anti-drug operations at 6,252, while human rights organizations have estimated the actual toll at between 12,000 and 30,000.
Malacañang pushed back on the same day. Palace Press Officer Claire Castro said that if the Vice President had information about gun violence, she should have helped both the current and previous administrations address it, noting she had long been a public official and that her father had served as president. Castro said Duterte should be among those working to prevent such acts rather than appearing to make light of them.
Abante, in a statement published July 30, apologized to the Vice President as a matter of respect and accountability. The outlet added, however, that it was not the exclusive source of the video, noting that other media organizations had shared the same clip and arguing that any standard applied to questions of context or editing should be uniform rather than singling out Abante. It also thanked the Office of the Vice President and its staff for monitoring its content.
The dispute lands amid a broader controversy over edited video tied to Duterte’s impeachment proceedings. Days earlier, an ethics complaint was filed against Senator Pia Cayetano over a separately spliced video involving House prosecutor Chel Diokno, which fact-checkers said misrepresented his statements on the prosecution’s request for the Vice President’s financial records.
Duterte faces an impeachment trial in the Senate centered on the alleged misuse of confidential funds during her term as education secretary, as well as a separate article alleging she threatened the lives of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Marcos, and former House Speaker Martin Romualdez.
