A former New People’s Army commander has allegedly become the owner of a five-star resort in El Nido, Palawan, according to several articles that popped up online. These articles were also shared by Duterte fan pages, such as “Atty. Rody R. Duterte Supporters,” “Duterte News Online,” and “President Duterte Supporters,” where the post got over 1,400 shares and 1,800 reactions, as of writing.
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The fan pages shared articles from pinoybuzzfeed.com and pinoyspeak.info, which is in Meme Buster’s list of fake news and satire sites. But these websites actually pointed to okd2.com as the source of the story.
According to the article, a certain Santiago “Ka Santi” Javellana, a former NPA commander leading the Propaganda Organizing Team (POT) in Negros Island, resigned from the group in March 2006 and was believed to be terminally ill due to his kidney problem. Javellana reportedly surrendered to the authorities and was admitted to the Riverside Hospital in Bacolod City.
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When he resurfaced a decade later in Negros, he was healthy and became an active official of the National Federation of Sugar Workers (NFSW) in Negros. A short profile of Javellana as an NPA member was also given.
The article further claimed that he now owned a five-star resort in El Nido, which people believed to have come from the wealth he got from the NPA when he was working as a treasurer.
Javellana was quoted saying, “I am 76 years old now and I believe that whatever I have right now has nothing to do with the NPA anymore.”
His son and two daughters are allegedly living in the US for American citizens, while his fellow rebels were suffering in Negros and believed that his wealth is ill-gotten.
However, we have a big problem with the article. We tried searching for a certain Santiago Javellana, an NPA returnee, but we could not find any news report covering his supposed surrender.
While Okd2 did not provide any photo in its article, the blogs and Duterte fan pages that shared their article put up a photo showing off what was supposedly Javellana’s five-star resort in El Nido.
But when we searched for that photo, it turned out to be the El Nido Resorts Miniloc Island.
The resort is owned by El Nido Resorts, which has since been owned by property giant Ayala Land Inc. (ALI) since November 2013, when it acquired the 40% stake of its partner, Asian Conservatory Co.’s (ACC).
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Okd2.com has been known to make up stories and this claim about a former NPA commander owning a five-star El Nido resort is just another story added to its list of fictional stories.
Source: (philstar.com)
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