A story published by website dakila.info claiming Vice President Leni Robredo and senatorial candidate Manuel “Mar” Roxas II have left the Liberal Party (LP) is false.
The wrong Oct. 30 report bore the headline, “PANOORIN! LENI at ROXAS INIWAN NA ANG PARTIDO NILA (Watch! Leni and Roxas have left their party)!” It carried a 10-minute clip from an 83-minute Facebook Live monologue last Oct. 29 by Duterte supporter Dante Maravillas.
In the clip, Maravillas did not claim Robredo has left her political party. He insinuated, however, that the vice president was distancing herself from the LP by supposedly wearing white clothes and not yellow, a color associated with the opposition party.
On the other hand, Maravillas wrongly claimed Roxas, a former LP president, will be running under a different party. Roxas is part of the official senatorial slate of the Oposisyon Koalisyon, a multi-party alliance of opposition groups LP, Akbayan, Magdalo Party-list and Aksyon Demokratiko, among others.
There have been no reports from mainstream media nor any statements from the camps of Robredo and Roxas about their supposed breakaway from the once ruling party.
Dakila.info’s false post was published two days after Robredo on Oct. 28 called for an electoral reform law prohibiting “political turncoatism.”
The false story could have reached over 524,000 people. Traffic to the story largely came from Facebook pages Pres. Rody Duterte Worldwide Supporters, Bagong Pag-asa ng Pilipino and Pilipinas Trending.
Dakila.info was created on April 13.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
