An online Facebook post that misleadingly juxtaposed photos of President Rodrigo Duterte’s and former President Benigno Aquino III’s purported housing programs is circulating again online.
Published Dec. 11 by a netizen, the post compared photos of Duterte inspecting a furnished bedroom and Aquino standing inside a wooden hut.
The label on Duterte’s photo read “gawa ng diktador (made by a dictator),” while Aquino’s bore “gawa ng disente (made by a decent man).” The caption noted:
“Mabuti pa ang Diktador may DISENTENG PABAHAY #HappyWithDU30”
The housing projects shown in the photos serve different purposes. Comparing them would be misleading.
The first image is a Dec. 10 official photo of Duterte examining a model house for military personnel during the awarding of 500 housing units at the Scout Ranger Ville Housing Project in San Miguel Bulacan. Duterte early in his presidency toured military camps and promised soldiers decent and affordable housing.
The second photo, grabbed from Malacanang Photo Bureau, shows Aquino inspecting transitional shelters in Guiuan, Eastern Samar for Typhoon Yolanda victims in November 2014, a year after the Category 5 typhoon struck parts of Visayas and Mindanao.
The same Aquino photo appeared in another post VERA Files fact-checked in October, which falsely claimed the Guiuan wooden huts were more expensive than the Duterte administration’s “hard-pressed styrofoam” shelters for Marawi City residents displaced by the war in 2017.
The misleading comparison, posted a day after Duterte’s visit to Bulacan has been shared over 12,000 times. It has since received more than 2,000 reactions and 208 comments.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
