Former Aquino presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda took to Twitter to hit Duterte supporter and blogger Sass Rogando-Sasot over her research about Cocoy Dayao, the man suspected of running the controversial anti-Duterte blog, silentnomoreph.com.
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Lacierda tweeted a screenshot of Sasot’s Facebook post showing Dayao’s LinkedIn page that proved he worked for the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) from July 2012 to July 2016 under the administration of former President Benigno Aquino III.
Sasot captioned her post, “Edwin, we have a problem.”
We looked for the original post from the Facebook page VOVph that Sasot reacted to.
VOVph posted this on October 4 with the accompanying screenshot of Dayao’s LinkedIn page:
“SINONG SINUNGALING? SI DAYAO O SI LACIERDA?
“The Office of the President (during PNoy admin) never hired Cocoy Dayao” – Edwin Lacierda”
Lacierda’s reaction to Sasot calling his attention through her Facebook post had him urging the blogger to do more research.
“Sassot (sic), If you did some basic research, you would not have been so stupid. I was not head of PCOO. Konting research besh,” he tweeted.
Sassot, If you did some basic research, you would not have been so stupid. I was not head of PCOO. Konting research besh. #FakeNews pic.twitter.com/JsdbaDk6hb
— Edwin Lacierda (@dawende) October 5, 2017
Lacierda was referring to the fact that VOVph was probably trying to disprove what he uttered during the Senate hearing on fake news on October 4, where he said that the Office of the Presidential Spokesperson, where he was a part of, did not hire Dayao. Notice how VOVph even mistakenly quoted Lacierda’s statement when they wrote, “The Office of the President,” when it was supposed to be “The OPS (Office of the Presidential Spokesperson).”
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You can watch the part of the Senate hearing when Senator Nancy Binay asked Lacierda and former Deputy Presidential Spokesperson Abigail Valte whether they hired Dayao at around 3:01:40 in this Rappler video of the hearing below:
Binay: Madam Chair, since nabanggit po kanina iyong Cocoy Dayao, have you ever hired directly or indirectly this Mr. Cocoy Dayao?
Lacierda: Thank you, Madam Chair. In my invitation, I was described as a former head of PCOO. I am not the former head of PCOO. I have my own office – Office of the Presidential Spokesperson (OPS). Manolo Quezon here was also invited. He has his own office – PCDSPO (Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office. The one who headed PCOO is Secretary Herminio “Sonny” Coloma. So if anyone is trying to make a link between me, Cocoy Dayao, because of the PCOO, was he ever been employed by me, I can categorically say that the OPS has never hired Cocoy Dayao.
Based on Lacierda’s answer during the Senate hearing, he has never hired Dayao for the OPS. Even if Dayao was indeed hired as a “consultant for web security,” he worked for the PCOO and not the OPS, where Lacierda held a position.
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