A blogspot is claiming that Comelec chairman Andres Bautista paid former Senator Bongbong Marcos a visit in Ilocos Norte and thousands of netizens have been sharing the story since it was posted on Facebook on August 27.
[ads2]
The story appeared to have come from thephpride.blogspot.com that we’ve busted several times before.
But when we clicked on the link, we were directed to a website with another URL – pinoynews.today.
The online report said that Bautista was spotted visiting Marcos in the former senator’s house in Laoag, Ilocos Norte. He was described by one of Marcos’ aide to have sported a “peaceful face upon leaving the area with three of his colleagues” after leaving Marcos’ house.
“Mukhang maganda ang pinag-usapan nila ni sir kasi mukhang payapa ang aura ni commissioner nong palabas na sila,” the aide was quoted telling a local reporter on “Monday.” We’re still confused as to the date of Bautista’s alleged visit to the Marcos home, though the article was posted on social media on August 27.
The meeting between Bautista and Marcos lasted for three hours, the report said.
[ads1]
It added that a Bombo Radyo reporter speculated that the Comelec chief may have provided Marcos election-related information for his electoral protest against Vice President Leni Robredo. The said reporter was also quoted saying, “Pwede ring humingi siya ng apology kay Senator Marcos.”
There was also a note at the end of the article about how the story was first published on Pinoy Observer, a fake news site that later claimed to be a satirical site and just recently said that they would focus on publishing real news.
However, the About page of thephpride.blogspot.com or pinoynews.today did not directly claim to be a satirical site. It just stated that the website is “not for gullible people.” This story about Bautista visiting Marcos is likely something written to test just how “gullible” people are and given the lack of credible sources to support this story, it ought not to be taken seriously as real news.
We spotted a few other fake stories on the site, too.
Despite the suspicious source of the story, it was still shared by Facebook pages “Showbiz Government” (while questioning the truthfulness of the story), “Favradio,” and a netizen to the Facebook group “Marcos Forever Official Group.”
And some netizens considered the story to be true, based on these comments.
However, there were also those who suspected the story as fake news, given its content and its source.
We’d also like to note that the feature image used in the story is a photo of Bautista accompanying his mom, Lita Bautista, to the polling place last May 2016 elections.
[ads3]
