Some Facebook posts are claiming that Naga City Mayor Leni Robredo had said the drug problem in her jurisdiction is so bad that it also persists even at the city hall. A reader asked VERA Files to check its veracity. Our finding: The quote is inaccurate.
The posts omitted words from Robredo’s statement, thus changing the meaning of what she had said.
On Nov. 20, two FB pages quoted the mayor as saying:
“Grabe ang problema sa drugs dito, kahit sa city hall mismo… Nakukulangan ako sa programa ng siyudad tungkol sa drugs.”
(The drug problem here is really serious, even at the city hall itself… I find the city’s drug program to be insufficient.)
The misleading posts were collectively shared nearly 5,000 times, and has so far received over 14,000 reactions.
The quote came from her Nov. 17 interview on Radyo Pilipinas Naga, where she spoke in her native tongue of Bikol. The FB pages left out crucial information from Robredo’s statement.
What she actually said was:
“Grabe ang problema ta sa drugs digdi (Naga). Dawa ang city hall mismo, nagkaigwa kaming assessment digdi o, and pagmati ko talaga not doing enough. Nakukulangan akong maray sa programa kang siyudad pag-abot sa drugs.”
Translated to Tagalog, it means:
“Malaki ang problema natin sa drugs dito (Naga). Kahit ang city hall mismo, nung nagkaroon kami ng assessment, ang pakiramdam ko talaga not doing enough. Sobra akong nakukulangan sa programa ng siyudad pagdating sa drugs.”
(We have a huge drug problem here. Even at the city hall, when we did an assessment, I really felt that [we’re] not doing enough. I’m extremely dissatisfied with the city’s program when it comes to drugs.)
The inaccurate quote card surfaced less than three days after Radyo Pilipinas Naga published its interview with Robredo.
FB page Ang Balita Ngayon, a satire/parody account created in May 2019, first posted the misleading quote. Several hours later, a digital content creator page called Readers Portal (created in December 2016 and has a history of branding itself as a Melania Trump fan page) created its own graphic card that used the same quote from Ang Balita Ngayon.
