What is the size of a controversy? And how is a story magnified, amplified, expanded at this time when anyone at all can manufacture digital noise, generate so much content that it will make it to our newsfeeds despite our algorithmic bubbles?
The Rodrigo Duterte presidency was a grand display of how government propagandists could make mountains out of molehills, be it about the purported achievements of their beloved president, or about his declared political enemies. We now know what it takes to keep any narrative going, where content is constantly and consistently generated to feed it, to repeat what is being said, until it starts moving on its own. Case in point: the criticism against the elite, the label of dilawan, the terrorista-komunista tag, and even, the label bobotante.
This, to me, is how we know for sure that even the worst, most baseless false narratives, when un-addressed and un-dealt with, can and will fester. To the point that there is no curing it—not with the truth, and certainly not with the tools that are familiar.
The Anti-First Lady trip
Duterte propagandists have always had it in for First Lady Liza Marcos, a project that has been helped along by both Vice President Sara Duterte’s and the presidential sister and senator Imee Marcos’s pronouncements against her.
What happened at the First Lady’s US trip for the Manila International Film Festival (MIFF) in March, as such, from the perspective of the Duterte propagandists, is an opportunity to hit the First Lady harder than they ever have. Never mind common sense and decency; never mind respect for a family in grief.
As early as March 11, the louder among the Duterte propagandists was already screaming at the top of her lungs about the death of someone from the First Lady’s MIFF entourage. Her unverified tsismis was aplenty: the First Lady was questioned and detained, the group of the FL was “nataranta”, they didn’t report the death until seven hours after, all of this pointing to what she insisted was an effort to cover up the death.
Part of this story was repeated by Vice President Sara Duterte in May, during the electoral campaign, where she connects this narrative about the First Lady being detained to the arrest of Rodrigo Duterte by the International Criminal Court (ICC). On May 5 2025 the vice president claimed:
Noong nagkaroon ng malaking krimen sa Estados Unidos na mayroong namatay dahil sa drug overdose at kung makikita ninyo sa police report ay nandoon ang pangalan ni First Lady Liza Marcos. Noong nagkaroon ng drug overdose at mayroong namatay sa Amerika at nandoon sa loob ng kwarto si First Lady Liza Marcos at nandoon sa police report, cocaine ‘yong sinasabing nagkalat doon sa kuwarto na ‘yon, ay bigla na lang nila hinila, kindinap, dinukot si Pangulong Duterte.
This narrative that the vice president weaves is one that has been repeated by Duterte propagandists. It surfaced in response to the fact that while the first tsismis spewed was that the First Lady was detained on March 8, this was easily disproven by the First Lady’s official accounts, among many others: during the day she is seen with members of the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles, and in the afternoon and evening at the MIFF 50: Konsyerto Para sa Filipino at Cerritos Center for Performing Arts in California. She would also be in Manila by March 11, turning over donations to the Girl Scouts of the Philippines.
But being disproven by facts is rarely the end for these narratives, dependent as these are on insinuations and possibilities, mostly maliciously articulated. Once the detention was disproven, it was only a matter of time before they came up with a new way to spin the narrative—because again, the goal is to keep it going. And going.
Unknotting the narrative
On rotation on Duterte social media algorithms has been a police report with margins in pink. At the bottom of it is what the Duterte propagandists have used to drive a knife through the First Lady’s narrative: her name along with two others, calling her a “companion of the victim” who is “summoned for questioning.”
The Palace, through its Spokesperson Claire Castro, has called this bottom section of that document “fake”, saying that it was added to the original document which only details what had happened to Mr. Tantoco.
The Duterte propagandists, of course, will not have any of it. For one, they insist this is a matter of public interest, that someone who they claim was part of the First Lady’s entourage died of a drug overdose. For another, they insist that since public funds were used for this MIFF project and trip, that they—and we—have the right to ask about what unfolded, especially given what they claim to be a “big deal”.
The reasoning behind thinking this “a big deal” is different for all of them. For the noisiest and crassest among them, protected as she is by being in America, she claims that this is proof of a government being run like a drug syndicate, and we should all be angrily standing with her in her battle against it. For the ones who are in the Philippines and already at risk of being sued for libel and defamation, they insinuate that the fact that the First Lady evaded questioning gives the US leverage against us.
If these are far-fetched and out of this world, that is precisely the point I am making here. It is as absurd as the connection the Vice President has made between the Tantoco death and the arrest of her father, which implicates the First Lady in both.
At the heart of all of this is the worn-out and disproven yet sustained baseless insistence that the President is a cocaine addict. This is the bigger narrative that this smaller story about the First Lady sustains; this is the larger claim that these smaller stories are supposed to buttress. In the same way that these are sustained by a Harry Roque creating dance steps to the “bangag” song that is now on its nth iteration; in the same way that this is sustained by the worst of political discourse that seems to gleefully celebrate the death of a person, because it is a means to the end they’ve been working towards.
It is why it’s important that when we engage with stories such as this one, we contextualize it in how it’s been sustained by the Duterte side all this time; because the last thing we want to do is to encourage these narratives and layer it with our own sense-making. Yes, we can be critical of the Marcos government, but goodness gracious, we certainly can do it better than the best of the Duterte propagandists.
Accidents, propriety, sobriety
It was on March 11 2025 that the Philippine Consulate General posted a statement on the death of Mr. Juan Paolo Tantoco, the same day the family would officially make its announcement. On July 13 2025, the LA County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s Office report would be released online about Tantoco’s death, which is why we are speaking about it at all.
Duterte propagandists will insist this is a big deal and spew a whole lot of questions that they insist deserve answers. Yet, even on the surface, all of this makes sense.
Tantoco was obviously plus-one to his wife, who was on official duty as Deputy Social Secretary. As one who has been plus-one on low-key small-scale government-funded trips, this to me always means that I will spend for my own expenses, including flights, hotel room additions (if you’re staying in the same room), and meals. This also means that you are not tied to the itinerary or schedule of the delegation.
Given who Tantoco is, it seems safe enough to presume that he didn’t spend a cent of public funds to make this trip.
And let’s say that he was, in fact, seen at some of the parties related to MIFF—wouldn’t that have been simply his right, given that he is also a taxpayer whose taxes paid for that dinner? That is how I would rationalize my own meals were it given to me as plus-one.
Being plus-one also means that you are extraneous to the official delegation; you can decide freely what to do with your time, and you can engage in activities that are solely yours. What happened to Tantoco on March 8 was solely his and his wife’s business. That his wife might have been on official duty as deputy social secretary doesn’t make this any more a public matter than if the accident happened in Manila, while the wife was working in Malacañang.
That the First Lady would carry on with her activities on March 8, despite the death of her deputy social secretary’s husband, is also as expected. She needed to keep to her schedule and keep up appearances, if only to give the family time and space to inform children and elders, put affairs in order, and address the situation calmly, properly, and with as much clarity as possible.
This is what decency and propriety teach us to do. This is what pakikiramay means. If that is something we cannot even see anymore as valid, if it is something that we must question, then that says more about those asking these questions than it does about the First Lady.
What might in fact be truly controversial is the fact that we have a vice president drawing far-fetched connections in the way her father did to justify his slapshod leadership, and a presidential sister and senator demanding that government violate the Tantocos’ right to privacy to feed the monster that is Duterte propaganda.
What is a big deal is that we are at a point where we cannot tell the difference anymore between irresponsible, unjust, baseless commentary that should be shut down at scale, and the kind of political discourse this democracy urgently needs.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
