A fabricated quote card being shared on TikTok and Facebook (FB) claims that former vice president Leni Robredo is supporting her successor Sara Duterte amid a House Quad Committee probe on the latter’s spending of confidential funds.
Two people sent the post to the VERA Files Misinformation Tip Line on FB Messenger for verification.
The fake quote card – posted on TikTok on Nov. 27 – attributed the statement below to Robredo:
“Before i answer that, i want to clear things first, we’re not friends, I don’t like Sara Duterte but I also don’t dislike her, hindi naman kami magkaaway pero honestly, ang confidential funds kasi is for general use, unlike budgets na may specific na ano, na pag gagamitan. Ang gusto kasi ng quad com is detalyado ang reports ng OVP, peso by peso dapat sabihin saan ginamit eh hindi po ganun yun, Hindi pwede yung gusto nila kaso confidential funds nga yun.
(Before I answer that, I want to clear things first: We’re not friends, I don’t like Sara Duterte but I also don’t dislike her. We’re not enemies. But honestly, the confidential funds are for general use, unlike budgets with specific purposes. What the Quad Comm wants is for the [Office of the Vice President] to give a detailed report, to tell where every peso was spent, but it does not work that way. What they want is not possible because those are confidential funds.)”
There are no interviews nor news articles found by VERA Files Fact Check that reflect the former vice president giving this comment.
“No. Fake quote. She never said anything like this,” Barry Gutierrez, Robredo’s spokesperson when she was VP, told VERA Files Fact Check in a Dec. 2 Viber message.
It was Duterte who said in September that “We’re not friends” (timecode 0:10 to 0:12), referring to herself and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The fabricated quote card circulated the same day Duterte held a press conference on Nov. 27 and said her strained relationship with Marcos has reached “the point of no return” (timecode 23:24 to 24:14).
In the briefing, she skirted a question about her office and the Department of Education – which she previously headed – being flagged by the Commission on Audit for violating a rule on confidential expenditures.
VERA Files Fact Check has previously debunked other fake quote cards falsely attributed to Robredo.
TikTok user @redhawkphilippines posted the fabricated graphic which has garnered over 1.1 million views and 9,363 interactions on the platform. Two other FB users also reposted the graphic, which got 261 reactions, 39 comments, and 107 shares.
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