The ‘grinch’ of the longest Christmas in the world is a vice president who says she hired a hitman to kill the president

In the Philippines, Christmas begins on September 1 and ends on December 31. That’s in the official calendar, because in many regions they extend the festival even further until Three Kings’ Day. In this vast archipelago with more than 7,000 islands they are proud to have the longest Christmas season in the world although it was never very clear to them why local Christmas carols begin to play on a loop in Manila’s shopping malls as soon as the summer ends at more than 30 degrees of temperature.

With quite a difference, Filipinas after centuries of Spanish colonization and more recent decades of American rule, is the most Christmassy country in Asia. A lot has to do with this that it houses the largest Christian community on the continent more than one 80% of its population. Family celebrations are loose and churches are full. In Davao, the second most populated city, the Simbang Gabi, midnight masses which are celebrated during the nine days prior to December 25 and in which one of the country’s great political clans fully participates: the Dutertes.

Rodrigothe patriarch, who a couple of years ago strolled around Davao dressed as Santa Claus, is the former president investigated at the International Criminal Court for ordering extrajudicial killings in his war on drugs. Sarathe daughter, current vice president, has been accused of leading a “death squad” made up of retired police officers. Sebastian, the son, who is now the mayor of Davao, before entering politics was famous for being a muscular surfer who had his own reality.

This Christmas, Filipinos are busy with the particular soap opera starring Sara Duterte (46 years old) and the President Marcosheir to another famous political dynasty: that of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who looted the state coffers and fled the country by helicopter. In 2022, the alliance between the two families swept the elections. Now, Marcos and Sara will not eat nougat together at parties.

The tension between the president and his vice president has crossed several limits that seriously threaten the stability of a country with a fragile democracy and a people who tend to venerate leaders with many authoritarian traits. Sara Duterte, after saying in a public event that I dreamed of cutting off Marcos’s head, a month ago he threatened to assassinate the president. He stated exactly that, in case one day she turned up dead, he had hired a hitman to kill President Marcos and his wife. “No joke. No joke,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

Marcos denounced his vice president for death threats that the leader has taken very seriously, especially after recent insinuations from former President Rodrigo Duterte, who suggested that the military could forcibly overthrow the government. Sara, in addition to the fight with the Filipino leader, faces two processes of impeachment presented in Congress for several cases of corruption. This is the Christmas yard in Philippine politics.