After the Philippines expressed readiness to host the 2026 Summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), three YouTube videos emerged claiming that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. was chosen as the new leader of the regional bloc. This needs context.
Chairmanship of ASEAN is by rotation, not by election.
First uploaded on Sept. 5, the video bore the headline:
“NAGULAT ANG LAHAT! GRABE PRES BBM! HAHAWAKAN NA ASEAN! ITO AYAW MANGYARE NG CHINA! PRES XI VS PBBM! (Everyone was shocked! Amazing President Bongbong Marcos will now lead ASEAN. China does not want this to happen! President Xi Jinping vs President Bongbong Marcos)”
At the 43rd ASEAN Summit in Indonesia last week, Marcos said the Philippines “is ready to take the helm and chair ASEAN in 2026,” adding it will strive to strengthen the community. The last time the country hosted the regional meeting was in 2017.
As the video played a clip of Marcos’ arrival at the Summit opening ceremony in Jakarta on Sept 5, the narrator said that the president spoke to all the ASEAN leaders and shared his hope that the next summit would be held in China to see if Beijing would comply with the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea. This claim is fabricated.
The hosting of the summit of the regional bloc is rotated among its member-countries. According to Article 31 of the ASEAN Charter, chairmanship rotates annually “based on the alphabetical order of the English names” of its 10 members.
Next year’s summit will be hosted by Laos, followed by Malaysia in 2025. Originally, Myanmar is to chair the 2026 summit and the Philippines in 2027. But because of the continuing civil unrest in Myanmar that followed the 2021 military takeover, Manila was asked to take on ASEAN’s chairmanship a year earlier.
The rest of the video showed former National Security Adviser Clarita Carlos’ Aug. 29 interview on SMNI News where she discussed Chinese aggression in the West Philippine Sea.
The Philippines is just one of the many ASEAN member-states that have territorial disputes with China. The others are Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.
Uploaded by previously fact-checked YouTube channels Boss Balita TV, BALITA NI JUAN and WANGBUDISS TV, the three videos received a total of 23,500 views and 915 likes.
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