Staunch Duterte supporter and blogger Sass Rogando Sasot hit the supporters of the Liberal Party for using her dead brother’s photo and claiming that it was her in the picture.
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“So someone sent me this. The supporters of the Liberal Party of the Philippines are circulating it among themselves,” Sasot wrote in a Facebook post.
She clarified that the man in the photo bearing her old name, “Allantroy R. Sasot,” was not actually her but her brother who passed away in 2014.
“The one in the picture isn’t me. That’s my brother. He died in 2014. That’s the hallmark of the Liberal Party of the Philippines — using dead people,” Sasot clarified.
When one commenter called Sasot’s own mother as heartless for not stopping LP from using her dead son’s photo, the blogger said the blame should not be placed upon her mother but on LP alone.
Some anti-Duterte pages did share the photo with Sasot’s male and current name on it.
Before this photo, some people also shared a screenshot of a comment that allegedly came from Sasot’s mother.
When this issue came out, another Duterte supporter, Krizette Laureta Chu, came to Sasot’s defense. Chu said that a mother who rejected her child’s “definition of self’ loses her right to comment on what that child does with her life.
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“If you tell her, “You can’t be you or you are on your own,” and then watch her as she flailed and floundered until she found her footing, you have no right to call yourself her mother,” Chu wrote.
“And now that she’s found her way in the world, you threaten to destroy her, call her by her old name, reject her again, not just who she has become without your guidance, but what she believes in,” she added.
She also addressed those who are “egging” Sasot’s mom just because of their “blind hatred” towards Sasot over differing political beliefs.
“Go on, egg on the woman, you unscrupulous people. You don’t even know their stories and yet, in your blind hatred towards a person for their political beliefs, you support discrimination and hatred. You support someone who insists on DEADNAMING their child. Someone who cant bear to use their child’s new name and still insists on the old one. Condemnation perpetua, then as now,” Chu said.
Sasot has been vocal in her support for President Rodrigo Duterte and has even met the President along with the other bloggers. She has recently become a hot topic for confronting BBC Southeast Asian correspondent Jonathan Head and accusing him of being biased for not covering all the sides in the matters involving the Philippines. During the same confrontation, Sasot also questioned what “powerful group” backed Duterte critic Jover Laurio, a.k.a. Pinoy Ako Blog, for her to get a three-minute BBC interview.
Based on some of the Facebook posts of Sasot’s mother, the man in the photo was called Allansky Sasot, not Allantroy, as what was labeled in the picture. Sasot’s mom also posted that Allansky died in January 5, 2014.
This was not the first time dead people were used in order to attack certain political figures or ideas. There was an article that used the name of Senator Antonio Trillanes IV’s dead child that was circulated by a Marcos fan page to make fun of the senator. Duterte former campaign spokesperson Peter Tiu also shared a photo of Brazilian child’s dead body while slamming the human rights activists, bishops and the media for not condemning the brutal act of criminals. He tried to defend the government’s war on drugs using the photo of a foreign rape victim’s dead body.
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