President Rodrigo Duterte approved the Department of Finance’s suggestion to reject aid from the European Union that are given with conditions that may meddle with the Philippines’ internal affairs, clarified Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella.
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President Duterte has lashed out at the EU a number of times for its criticism of the Philippine government’s war on drugs.
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Immediately after, another story broke about how a Belgian politician and a member of the European Parliament, Guy Maurice Louise Verhofstadt, slammed the Philippine government’s decision to reject the EU grant, adding that they might end up giving the grant directly to the Filipino citizens.
However, we could not find any other similar reports that could confirm this alleged reaction from Verhofstadt. It doesn’t help either that the story was first published by the fake news site Aljazeera-channel.com on May 18.
But the story has already spread on Facebook, gaining thousands of shares.
It was even shared by the Facebook page “FACTS Against Ignorance,” which hit Duterte’s decision to reject the grant.
Some of the netizens even called the page’s attention when they suspected Aljazeera-channel.com of being a fake news site.
Another one even showed the official website of Al Jazeera, to which FACTS Against Ignorance replied, “TY Sis. It’s not yet outlawed to engage in Saturday sarcasm.”
Aljzeera-channel.com is indeed a fake news site, hence it cannot be trusted. It has published fake stories such as VP Robredo saying she’d strip naked if Senator De Lima isn’t released from prison, US imposing a travel sanction on Robredo, Australian PM telling human rights groups not to fight Duterte, and more.
Despite FACTS Against Ignorance’s goal of being sarcastic when posting this fake news story, there were still several netizens who treated the story as real news.
EU Ambassador Franz Jessen said on May 18 that the DOF informed them about the Philippines’ rejection of the grant on May 17.
Source: ( cnnphilippines.com )
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