The Philippine government will use its “authority and forces” to stamp out any attempt to separate the country, its national security adviser said, following a threat by former leader Rodrigo Duterte to split his native Mindanao from the rest of the nation.

“The national government will not hesitate to use its authority and forces to quell and stop any and all attempts to dismember the Republic,” Eduardo Ano, the security official in President Ferdinand Marcos Jr’s government, said in a statement on Sunday (Feb 4).

His comments, which didn’t name Duterte, came after the former president warned last week that the Mindanao region will become independent if his successor goes ahead with plans to amend the constitution. Marcos has backed efforts to revise the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution to spur the economy, but the 78-year-old ex-leader has accused him of seeking to amend the charter to cement his power.

The remarks underscore the deepening cracks in the alliance of the Philippines’ two most powerful political families that won the 2022 election ahead of midterm polls next year.

In an interview with a local broadcaster last month, Marcos expressed concern over the South-east Asian nation’s restrictive economic provisions and kept the door open to changes in politicians’ term limits. Duterte warned Marcos that if he pushes ahead, he would be ousted like his father who ruled for two decades by revising the constitution.

The late dictator Ferdinand Marcos was overthrown by a popular revolt in 1986. A new constitution ratified a year later limits the country’s leader to a single, six-year term to prevent future abuse of power.

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Other politicians, including Duterte’s daughter, Vice-President Sara Duterte, say that changing the charter is ill-timed, as the nation is still grappling with high food prices, crimes and other pressing problems. Sara Duterte is an early favourite to succeed Marcos in the 2028 presidential election.

Ano said that calls for secession threaten to undo efforts to end decades of armed conflict in Mindanao, the second-largest island in the Philippines. The government in 2014 reached a peace agreement with the largest Muslim rebel group in the region after decades of insurgency that killed as many as 200,000 people and hurt the development of its rich resources. BLOOMBERG