President Rodrigo Duterte has always been vocal about his admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin, even calling Putin his “hero.” When they finally met in person last November at the APEC Summit in Lima, Peru, Duterte said that they became “fast friends.”
But has that friendship led Russia to factor in the creation of 2 million jobs in the Philippines into its 2017 budget?
[ads2]
This is what several online articles claimed and such articles were shared by Duterte fan pages on Facebook. In fact, they became so popular that they gained thousands and thousands of shares, with netizens fully buying the claim that Russia is about to open 2 million livelihood opportunities to Filipinos.
The articles have been so easy to sell for the Duterte fan pages “Duterte Warriors” and “Duterte Parallel Organization – Tagumpay ng Pagbabago” that they shared it three times on October 24 and 25 and on November 21 last year.
These Duterte fan pages shared articles from blogs like newstrendph.com and du30newsinfo.com. But when we clicked on the links, we encountered a 404 or Not Found error.
[ads1]
We looked for other blogs that have not taken down the article and found newsmediaph.com. The article claimed that the Russian government included the Philippines in its 2017 budget to bring 2 million jobs to the country since according to Putin, doing so would strengthen the relationship between both countries as well as serve as a source of raw materials for the manufacturers in Russia. The newly created jobs will allegedly be distributed across agriculture, manufacturing, banking, vocational education, mining, creative arts, construction, ICT, engineering, aerospace, automotive, shipbuilding and repair, and electronics.
Aside from creating jobs, Russia’s budget for the Philippines also include sending Filipino scholars to Russia.
Russia is said to have set aside $15 billion for the Philippines, based on the article’s claims.
When we checked its source, it turned out to be aljazeera-tv.com, which has since changed its URL to espn.local-reports.com. This is the same site that has published fake news such as De Lima wanting to ban social media in the Philippines, businessman John Gokongwei giving Duterte a bulletproof car, and Duterte banning smoking in public in the Philippines.
Moreover, we couldn’t find a credible source supporting these claims.
What we found instead are reports about how Duterte and his business delegation could be bringing home $24 billion worth of deals from China, which the Department of Trade and Industry estimated to generate at least 2 million jobs for the Filipinos. Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez even said that this figure is bound to grow over the next 5 years.
This only proves that it was not Russia that is bound to give the Filipinos 2 million jobs, but the deals Duterte and his delegation bagged from China during their visit in October.
Sources: (rappler.com, beta.philstar.com, philstar.com)
Be Informed. Beat the Trolls, Share the Truth!
[ads3]
