Local, foreign officials score barrage of fake news
Senate leaders on Sunday deplored the ongoing barrage of “fake news” being peddled by supporters of former President Rodrigo Duterte even overseas, apparently led by his daughter, Vice President Sara Duterte, who has been called out for making patently false claims in local and international media.
While the barrage of fake news appeared to be wide-ranging, Senate President Vicente Sotto III focused on attempts to confuse or disinform the public about the developments in local politics.
“Very devious! The Senate Blue Ribbon (committee of Sen. Panfilo Lacson) has not even held a hearing, they already want to replace it. What are they so afraid of?” Sotto said in a post on X.
This came barely a week after a major leadership shakeup in the upper chamber, with Sotto replacing Sen. Francis Escudero at the top post. Sotto secured the backing of 15 senators for the leadership change that happened on Sept 8.
But only six days after the shakeup, fake news trolls are already doubling down on their claim that Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano has supposedly secured enough numbers to become Senate president.
“Fake,” Lacson said in a statement. “Intended to deceive and confuse. Underestimating the intelligence of the new Senate majority bloc, hoping someone will jump in and sign.”
“Malevolent, underhanded, foul and desperate. If there’s a song ‘Achy Breaky Hearts,’ this one is ‘Faky Breaky News,’” Lacson added, noting that the claims in social media claiming to be a media outlet.
Lacson pointed out that there is a “proper and professional way” to effect a leadership change in the Senate.
“The proper and professional way is to call or approach the Senate president, inform and show him the resolution signed by at least 13 senators, then the sitting Senate President resigns at the opening of the session, not through a media outlet, whether nationally recognized or obscure,” he said.
Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, the Senate’s new majority leader, also dismissed the false report in an interview with radio dzBB.
Stability needed
“There is no change in the leadership. We just had a new Senate president,” he said, adding that the Senate’s majority bloc wants stability in leadership.
“If we look at it, many things are happening in our country … and for me, the Senate needs a stable leadership to investigate these,” he added.
The senators made the remarks after an official of the International Criminal Court (ICC) warned that her false remarks may be endangering her father’s bid to gain an interim release while under trial for crimes against humanity.
In an eight-page document posted on the ICC website, deputy prosecutor Mame Mandiaye Niang cited several remarks given by the vice president in her interviews and public statements while in The Hague, such as rejecting the legitimacy of the court’s jurisdiction.
Niang included a July 19 statement by Sara Duterte wherein she spoke in front of a crowd of their supporters and an interview afterwards, and reiterated the claim that her father was “kidnapped” by the international tribunal and that the arrest was “illegal.”
The deputy prosecutor also recalled a time when Sara Duterte told Duterte family supporters, “supposedly in jest,” that she had “discussed” breaking her father out of detention with a colleague and in one livestream on Facebook, allegedly calling to “collaborate on a jailbreak.”
Niang also cited a speech by Sara Duterte, also on July 19, where she “falsely claimed that the ICC was ‘colluding’” with the Philippine government and made allegations that it was paying for “fake witnesses” in her father’s case of crimes against humanity.
“She also blamed the Government of the Netherlands for having joined the ‘extraordinary rendition’ of Mr. Duterte, and blamed the ICC for accepting Mr. Duterte ‘with open arms’ despite having been ‘kidnapped from his own land,’” Niang said in the office of the prosecutor’s opposition.
