PRESIDENT Ferdinand Marcos Jr. affirmed his support for Vice President Sara Duterte and assured he “will pay very close attention” to issues concerning her office and leadership.

The President issued the statement amid calls to impeach Duterte over controversies involving the Office of the Vice President, chiefly its request for P500 million in confidential funds.

“We are closely monitoring because we don’t want her to be impeached. She does not deserve to be impeached. So, we will make sure that this is something that we will pay very close attention to,” he told reporters at a briefing in Honolulu, Hawaii, last Sunday.

Marcos was on the last stop of his weeklong third visit to the United States for the 30th AsiaPacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders’ Meeting in San Francisco, California.

He said moves to impeach elected officials are not new and that there will always be “an element” that wants “to change the results of an election.”

“So, I guess, a continuing evolution of that thinking that because there is someone or something we don’t like, we remove them, let’s impeach them. Well, maybe there are reasons why we are disliked. That’s not a reason to be impeached,” he said.

He stressed that, on a personal level, he and Duterte continue to have “an excellent relationship.”

The vice president on Sunday said that her relationship with the President was “OK.”

Marcos also belied claims of a “crack” in the UniTeam, and boasted that the alliance formed during the 2022 election is even getting stronger and bigger with the addition of more members.

“These are the same people that talk about impeachment. They are the same people that [say] ‘wala na, nagbabaklas-baklas na ‘yung UniTeam (it’s over for UniTeam). That’s not true. Just look at the political developments in the past few months,” the President said.