The estranged sister of Ferdinand Marcos Jr has publicly accused him of using drugs, triggering a political storm that the Philippine president’s office has dismissed as baseless.
Senator Imee Marcos said at a rally on Monday night that Marcos Jr had been using drugs since they were children and the addiction had grown worse since he married first lady Marie Louise Araneta Marcos.
The senator, an ally of her brother’s predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, claimed that the president’s cocaine addiction was the cause of “a flood of corruption, the lack of direction and wrong decisions, the absence of accountability and justice” under his rule.
“Ever since Bongbong and I were kids, the family already knew about him,” the senator said, referring to the president by his pet name. Imee Marcos and Ferdinand Marcos Jr are the children of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
She was speaking at a rally organised by an influential church group to protest against a flood-control corruption scandal involving powerful lawmakers and top government officials.
“Back then, because our father was still around, he wasn’t my responsibility yet. As he grew older, it became more concerning. I knew he was using drugs,” she told the public rally attended by almost half a million people in Manila Park.
She called on the president to seek treatment to “rid your system of drugs”, saying she could not bear to lose her brother.
Communications undersecretary Claire Castro denied the senator’s accusations as “baseless” and implied they could be intended to deflect attention from an ongoing investigation against her allies in the Senate who were implicated in the corruption scandal.
"Senator Imee, I hope you will be a patriot and help in the investigation that your own brother has been doing and condemn all the corrupt,” she said. “Do not side with them, don't hide them. Let President Marcos work to stop all the corruption."
It is not the first time Mr Marcos has been accused of using drugs. In 2021, when he was still just a presidential aspirant, his spokesperson showed two reports from a private hospital and the national police laboratory that stated Marcos Jr had tested negative for cocaine and methamphetamine.
The president’s son, Sandro Marcos, the House of Representatives majority leader, denounced his aunt’s allegations as “dangerously irresponsible”.
“It pains me to see how low she has gone, to the point that she resorts to a web of lies aimed at destabilising this government to advance her political ambitions,” he said in a statement on Tuesday. “To further repeat an accusation against President Bongbong Marcos and the First Lady and, for the first time ever, myself, that’s not only false but dangerously irresponsible. All that the senator mentioned has no basis, no truth, and no good intentions for the country.”
The allegations came a year after Mr Duterte also accused the president of being a drug addict, prompting him to hit back.
Mr Duterte, 80, was jailed by the International Criminal Court earlier this year over three counts of committing crimes against humanity for overseeing the killings of at least 76 people during the “war on drugs” that came to define his presidency.
He denies wrongdoing and his family and allies blame the Marcos Jr government for orchestrating what they denounce as the former leader’s illegal arrest in Manila and subsequent detention in the Hague.
Mr Duterte’s son, Davao City representative Paolo Duterte, urged the president to take a hair follicle drug test in the interest of transparency.
