Senator Leila de Lima denied issuing a statement saying that the attack on Davao was President Rodrigo Duterte’s idea for him to have a reason to declare martial rule and that Davao City is not the safest city after all.
This statement, which was attributed to de Lima, has been circulating in social media: “It could be a strategy of Duterte forces to provide him reason to declare Martial Law, Davao is not the safest place after all.”
What’s alarming is that this quote has been shared thousands of times, especially by Duterte fan pages like President Rodrigo “Rody” Duterte, Rodrigo Duterte My President, and Solid Duterte Fighters, among others.
When some of the commenters on the “Solid Duterte Fighters” fan page called the admins out for spreading the wrong information and attributing the wrong quote to de Lima.
But the admins were quite firm about saying that the statement is not a hoax mainly because it was shared by a “credible” Duterte page, Duterte2016, complete with a screenshot of that post. We visited the page, but the post was probably taken down because we can no longer find it.
De Lima’s office said that whoever attributed the false statement to her was trying to discredit her.
“Obviously, this statement maliciously attributed to her is part of the disinformation campaign designed to discredit her,” her office said in a statement.
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Even famed wedding videographer to the stars, Jason Magbanua, posted his observations about the spread of the quote supposedly uttered by de Lima.
He said he researched about the quote and nothing came up that ever proved that de Lima said those words.
Memebuster also Googled the quote but there was no credible source of the said statement. We found one that led to a Duterte fan blog that was apparently taken down.
Magbanua called the viral sharing of the wrong de Lima quote as a “mob mentality” as thousands of social media users shared it as a “knee jerk reaction,” without bothering to research and verify it first.
He added that there might really be a devoted manufacturer of fake news and memes that are easily consumed by those who share posts “blindly,” while urging to support the victims instead of focusing on political agenda.
“This really makes me think there’s a meme and fake news factory out there somehow generating fuel to the fire to be shared blindly,” Magbanua said. “It’s not the time for political agenda. It’s a time for getting behind those who were affected by the attacks.”
For those who want to know what de Lima has to say about the Davao bombing and Duterte’s declaration of “state of lawlessness,” she issued her official statement on her Facebook page on September 4, which you can find here.
Sources: (gmanetwork.com, facebook.com, web.facebook.com)
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