Several social media posts claim former vice president Leni Robredo dressed inappropriately when she supposedly met with officials in the Middle East. These are false.
Posted on Nov. 14, two Twitter posts featured a photo collage of Robredo wearing an olive green below-the-knee lace dress over a gray slip. Two frames in the collage zoom in on her outfit.
The posts’ captions read:
- “Panay puna nyo sa pagsuot ng barong ni PBBM…pinuna nyo ba suot ng Ina nyo naka see through nung nagpunta sya sa Middle East na very conservative country (You guys keep criticizing PBBM for wearing barong… did you criticize your Mother wearing see through clothes when she went to the Middle East which is a very conservative country)??…”
- “Appropriate attire for meeting the Sultan of Saudi Arabia see through dress in a conservative country and you meet their King. Wow. Just wow.”
The photos were not from an event in the Middle East but at the Shangri-La The Fort in Taguig City during the 88th National Day of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia celebration on Sept. 25, 2018.
Robredo met with the former Ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the Philippines, Abdullah N.A. Al Bussairy at the event, not with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud as claimed in one of the tweets.
The photos originally came from Robredo’s official Facebook (FB) account.
On Oct. 8, 2018, the satirical website Adobo Chronicles published similar cropped photos focusing on the outfit in an article criticizing Robredo.
As in 2018, Robredo is again drawing flak online after some netizens called the outfit inappropriate.
The same disinformation falsely claiming the event took place in the Middle East circulated in 2019 and was debunked by Fact Rakers.
The posts came out a day after the 40th and 41st Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summits and Related Summits concluded in Cambodia, where President Ferdinand Marcos wore barong Tagalog among other world leaders who wore their suits. Marcos’ outfit drew both support and criticism online.
The post by Twitter users @AiramLex21 (created in October 2022) and @HonestLilVixen (June 2020) collectively garnered 301 replies, 259 retweets and 662 likes and are still getting traction. The disinformation has also reached FB, with a netizen sharing one of the posts’s screenshot to the group PH Politics Today (created as ABL – AngBitterLenlen on Feb. 4, 2022).
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(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
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