Amid reports about a Senate employee suspected of using illegal drugs in a comfort room, a YouTube channel posted a video claiming that Sen. Robinhood Padilla had been ousted and sentenced with imprisonment after he was supposedly caught using marijuana. This is false.
Padilla is still a member of the Senate of the 20th Congress,as its website shows. No credible news reports or press releases from the chamber have been published regarding the senator’s alleged use of marijuana inside the Senate building in Pasay City.
Posted on Aug. 18, the video carried the text on its thumbnail that read:
“INUTUSAN NA SERGEANT AT ARMS!
KAKAPASOK LANG! SENATOR ROBIN PADILLA NAIYAK! NAHULI NA GUMAGAMIT NG MARIJUANA SA SENADO
SIBAK AT KULONG ANG HATOL
(Sergeant-at-arms ordered!
Just in! Senator Robin Padilla cried! Caught using marijuana in the Senate
Verdict: removal from office and imprisonment)”
The spurious video featured a portion of the Senate session on Feb. 5 where Padilla defended Senate Bill No. 2573, also known as the Cannabis Medicalization Act of the Philippines that he filed in the 19th Congress but failed to pass on third and final reading.
There was no move from fellow senators to expel Padilla from the chamber. According to Article VI, Section 16 (3) of the 1987 Constitution, a senator can only be suspended or expelled with the concurrence of two-thirds of all the Senate members.
While the video surfaced amid reports about marijuana use by a staff member of Padilla, it did not cite evidence that the senator himself consumed the drug in the Senate premises, as it claimed.
In an Aug. 13 incident report addressed to the Office of Sergeant-at-Arms, actress Nadia Montenegro, Padilla’s political affairs officer, was identified for alleged marijuana use in the ladies’ comfort room in the Senate. Padilla, who has refiled the bill for the medical use of cannabis among his top 10 priority measures in the 20th Congress, was not mentioned in the report.
Five days after this, Padilla’s Chief of Staff Rudolf Philip Jurado confirmed Montegro’s resignation on Aug. 18. In her five-page written explanation to Jurado dated Aug. 15, the actress “vehemently [denied]” the accusation of smoking marijuana, stating she stepped down “for the sake of my mental health and the welfare of my children.”
“My decision to resign should not be misconstrued as an admission of guilt—it is not. Rather, it is a demonstration of my deep respect for the Senate and Senator Padilla’s office, so that this issue does not cause further distraction or harm,” Montenegro added.
VERA Files has debunked other disinformation related to the senator.
Published by YouTube channel TATAK TRENDING PH (created on Nov. 13, 2014), the video with the untrue claim has garnered 65,008 interactions as of writing.
