ON June 19, Vice President Sara Duterte unexpectedly resigned as secretary of education and vice chairman of the National Task Force to End the Local Communist Armed Conflict, without a word of explanation to the President or to the Filipino people. It is the first major and politically significant resignation in the nearly three-year-old Marcos Cabinet. Sara, who had initially wanted to become defense secretary, was Marcos Jr.'s first Cabinet appointee, and is now the first to bail out.

Many administration officials have expressed relief that the unstable relationship between her and Malacañang has finally been resolved, but it may have set off its own wave of domestic problems.