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An image of a memo created to lampoon criticisms of Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo’s absence in the administration’s 43rd Cabinet meeting, has gone viral on Facebook (FB). Some netizens have branded the satirical image as “fake news”; others believed it was true.
On Nov. 9, a Facebook (FB) user posted a screenshot of a memorandum as viewed on a mobile phone. The memo was supposedly issued by President Rodrigo Duterte to Robredo, reprimanding the latter for not attending the Nov. 6 Cabinet meeting after she accepted her appointment as co-chair of the Inter-agency Committee on Anti-illegal Drugs (ICAD).
The netizen captioned the image with: “May babala agad Kay Lugaw (A warning was issued to ‘simple-minded’ [Robredo]).”
This post is untrue. A reverse image search reveals the memo is part of a parody created on Nov. 7 by The Adobo Chronicles, a satirical blog registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office since 2015. The FB user who uploaded the screenshot made no mention it was merely a satirical piece.
The spoof memo looked evidently photoshopped — the font sizes were uneven; the word Malacañan was misspelled; and the seal of the Office of the President (OP) was misplaced. It did not look like the earlier memo of the president, appointing Robredo to her new post.
Adobo Chronicles continued its parody with another spoof of Robredo responding to the “first warning.”
Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo had earlier said Robredo’s position in ICAD was a Cabinet rank. Robredo said there was no such explanation in the memo issued by the president.
Robredo has since explained she will only attend Cabinet meetings if invited. In 2016, Duterte barred the vice president from the meetings due to “irreconcilable differences” though she was then head of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC). Robredo eventually resigned from that post.
(Editor's Note:VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
